1 winner snaps up US$1.6b lottery prize

ONLY one ticket matched all six numbers in the US Mega Millions lottery for a jackpot that was just short of a world record US$1.6 billion, an official said early yesterday.

The ticket, sold in South Carolina, where winners may remain anonymous, matched the five numbers 5, 28, 62, 65, 70 and the Mega Ball 5 that were drawn on Tuesday night, a Mega Millions spokeswoman said.

The buyer of the ticket beat the odds of one in 303 million to win the Mega Millions drawing for one of the largest jackpots in US history.

Still, the jaw-dropping US$1.537 billion jackpot failed to break the record for lottery winnings, held by the US$1.586 billion Powerball prize shared by winners in January 2016.

Before the drawing, lottery officials had been reporting an expected record-breaking US$1.6 billion jackpot, based on estimates tied to historical patterns, lottery spokeswoman Carole Bober Gentry said yesterday. After the drawing, lottery officials rolled back the jackpot total, based on actual ticket sales.

“There are few precedents for a jackpot this size. Typically, about 70 percent of sales occur on the drawing day, so forecasting precise numbers in advance can be difficult,” Gentry said in a statement.

For the winner, options include an immediate cash payment of US$877.8 million, or the US$1.537 billion prize paid out over 29 years.

There were 36 second-tier winners, those who picked five winning numbers but did not match the Mega Ball. Most were rewarded with a US$1 million prize, but two of them — in Florida and Texas — added a Megaplier option, tripling their winnings to US$3 million.

Across the game’s nine prize tiers, there were more than 15.7 million winning tickets in Tuesday’s drawing.