tangent
Wednesday night’s draw was the first time the Powerball jackpot expanded to include ticket buyers from the U.K. Lottery officials in the U.S. have said the expansion of the game to include British ticket buyers will lead to “faster-growing jackpots,” as the additional ticket sales will contribute to the prize fund. A key difference for U.K. players is that they won’t have the option to choose a lump-sum payout and will only receive the jackpot split across 30 annual payments.
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How Much would a U.K. Winner take Home?
The advertised jackpot prize for U.K. players is £322 million ($431 million). This appears significantly lower than the $600 million U.S. prize, but according to the U.K. National Lottery this takes into account the estimated amount a winner would receive over a 30-year period, “after exchange rates and UK tax requirements have been taken into account.”
What To Watch For?
The next Powerball drawing is set to take place on Saturday night. Before that, on Friday night, Mega Millions is set to hold its next drawing for a jackpot that has surged to $743 million.
big number
1-in-292.2 million. Those are the astronomical odds a Powerball ticket buyer will need to overcome to win the jackpot. These odds remain unchanged despite the addition of British ticket buyers. This is even worse than the Mega Millions jackpot’s already poor odds of 1-in-290.4 million.
key background
This is only the second lottery prize to cross the $600 million mark so far this year, behind only the ongoing Mega Millions jackpot. Of the prizes that have been claimed so far, the biggest of the year is a $533 million jackpot won by a Mega Millions ticket buyer from Illinois in March. The biggest completed Powerball jackpot of the year so far is a $250.8 million prize won by a lottery player from Arkansas.
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further reading
Powerball Jackpots Are About To Grow Faster—Here’s Why (Forbes)
Mega Millions Nears $750 Million—Here’s What The Winner Could Take Home (Forbes)