$1-billion jackpot sparks lottery fever
Tickets sell about 200 per second at lunch hour
There’s something lucky about that bluebird.
As the Mega Millions jackpot swelled to $1 billion Friday, lottery-winning hopefuls traveled from near and far to test their luck and rub their tickets on the songbird figurine inside Bluebird Liquor in Hawthorne.
In Los Angeles folklore, the bluebird that sits in the front window of the shop has been responsible for some sizable prizes. The liquor store has sold four tickets worth at least $1 million since 2013, making it the luckiest retailer historically in Los Angeles County, according to lottery officials.
By 8 a.m. Friday, more than 50 people formed a line that snaked around the store and through the parking lot. Over the course of an hour, the line never shrank — as soon as one person purchased a ticket and left, another filled the gap in the line.
Terry Dunevant, 59, of Redondo Beach has been playing the lottery regularly with his wife for the last 25 years, but he hasn’t had much luck yet. His hottest ticket netted him about $80.
Still, he waited more than 30 minutes to try his hand at the largest Mega Millions prize in history.
“I’m going to rub that bird’s head,” he said with a chuckle. However, it might not be that easy.
The winning numbers for the $1 billion jackpot were announced late Friday: 15, 23, 53, 65, 70 and Mega Ball 7.
There were no jackpot winners in California, but lottery officials were still waiting on results from other states. One
ticket sold in Morgan Hill, Calif., matched five of six numbers.
If no one in the nation won Friday, the jackpot will grow to an estimated $1.6 billion in the Tuesday drawing, according to lottery officials.
If it seems like lottery jackpots are getting larger, it’s because they are: Lottery officials changed the odds in recent years to lessen the chance of winning a jackpot, which in turn increased the opportunity for top prizes to reach stratospheric levels.
The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot is about 1 in 303 million. But Dunevant has an answer for that: “You can’t win if you don’t play.”
Nearly all lottery winners take the lump-sum cash option, which had reached about $565 million Friday morning. The annuity option guarantees more money, but it’s paid over 30 years.
On Thursday, the California Lottery sold $5.7 million in Mega Millions tickets during the first half of the day. The height of sales came during the lunch hour, when people were buying 200 tickets per second. Sales on Friday were poised to surpass that. The initial prize for Friday night’s drawing was $970 million, but as more people purchased tickets, it ballooned to $1 billion.
Some players sat at tables set up inside the store to bubble in their numbers. During a break from work, Edgard Gonzalez, 40, a San Fernando Valley resident, stood in the parking lot marking his favored numbers. He struck a deal with two of his co-workers that if one person wins, they all split the prize. He bought tickets earlier in the week but came up empty-handed.
“I hope this time we have better luck,” he said. “Maybe we won’t go to work tomorrow if we win.”
Most people don’t expect to take home the top prize and instead think the ticket is a small price to dream and be part of a wishful conversation with co-workers, family and strangers they meet in line.
Jane L. Risen, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago, said that when the jackpot grows so large, it creates a sense of community, “this sense of camaraderie.”
“I also think that it creates a potential sense of regret to not be the one playing,” she said.