Paula Otto, executive director of
the Virginia Lottery and lead director for Mega Millions, said ticket
sales are ahead of projections for Tuesday's drawing, increasing the
likelihood it could shatter the current record of $656 million, set in a
March 2012 Mega Millions drawing.
That
was enough for Drew Gentsch to buy one ticket Monday morning. The
attorney from Des Moines never plays, but the ballooning jackpot was too
good to pass up.
"I think
it's ridiculous but you have to dream big," he said. "The odds of
winning are so low, there's no real reason to play. But it's fun to do
so once in a while."
The large
Mega Millions prize is the product of a major game revamp in October
that dramatically lowered the odds of winning the jackpot. If a winner
isn't selected Tuesday night and it rolls over past the next drawing
scheduled Friday night, Otto predicts the jackpot will reach $1 billion —
an unheard of amount for Mega Millions or Powerball, the nation's two
main lottery games.
"We had
predicted last week that if we are still on the same roll on Christmas
Eve, we'll definitely be over a billion," she said.
Scott Norris, a mathematician
from Southern Methodist University, said he estimates around 700 million
more tickets must be sold without producing a winner for the jackpot to
reach $1 billion on this run. He puts the odds of that around 6
percent.
Norris emphasized his
calculation does not take into account the extra $1 that players can
throw in for the Megaplier option, which allows them to increase their
non-jackpot prize by up to five times.
John
Hagerty, a spokesman for the Virginia Lottery, said officials can't
confirm Norris' calculation. He said there's no clear number for sales
if the jackpot rolls past Tuesday, so they can't accurately calculate
what percentage of the possible combinations will be covered.
The
current jackpot, which is the fourth largest in U.S. history and
closely trails the $587.5 million and $590.5 million set by Powerball,
has had heavy sales over the last several days. Otto noted that the
higher the jackpot, the higher the sales. For example, when the jackpot
was $99 million on Nov. 5, lottery officials sold just over $20 million
worth of tickets. For Friday's then-$425 million jackpot, $168 million
worth of tickets were sold.
Otto
said it's likely the jackpot will be increased again after lottery
officials meet Tuesday morning to discuss sales. Between 65 and 70
percent of the roughly 259 million possible number combinations will be
in play when the numbers are drawn, Otto estimated.
"Lotto players are procrastinators. They tend to buy on the day of the draw," she said.
Some
players were taken aback by the growing jackpot and the possibility
that it could keep getting bigger if it rolls for a 22nd consecutive
time.
Natali Justiniano Pahl,
47, bought five tickets Monday morning from a convenience store in
downtown. She said the growing jackpot made her excited, albeit somewhat
weary.
"It gets the
excitement up, but there's a point when it's too much," said Justiniano
Pahl, who works in human resources. "$5 million would be good; $550
million would be good. Either one would change your life."
Otto
said officials have never had such a huge jackpot around this time of
year, and it's unclear how holiday shoppers are driving sales.
"To have that kind of money on the line the week before Christmas, we've never had that happen before," she said, "What fun."
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