Powerball adds drawing to build bigger jackpots

DES MOINES, Iowa — Lottery players will get more chances to win giant jackpots as the Powerball game shifts to three drawings per week in an effort to build larger prizes and boost sales.

The change will begin Monday, the first time the game is expanding beyond two weekly drawings since it was launched 29 years ago. It is intended to create consistently larger prizes, said May Scheve Reardon, the Missouri Lottery executive director and current leader of Powerball.

Although plenty of people spend $2 on a Powerball ticket when prizes are lower, sales typically take off when jackpots reach $400 million or more, she said. In part, that’s because after recent jackpots that have topped $1.5 billion, even life-changing prizes can seem comparatively puny.

“Jackpot fatigue is real, and by increasing the days of the draws, we’ll be able to grow bigger jackpots faster and get more people interested in the game and turn over more money to our beneficiaries,” Reardon said.

Powerball, overseen by the Urbandale, Iowa-based MultiState Lottery Association, is played in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. In the 2021 fiscal year, the game had sales of more than $4 billion.

Arkansas Scholarship Lottery gaming director Mike Smith said the change could boost sales 15% to 20% in the next fiscal year, which began July 1. He said the state’s lottery budget calls for $21 million in revenue in fiscal 2022.

“Powerball is a jackpot-dependent game, and in order to exceed budgeted revenue, we need higher-than-average jackpots,” Smith said in an email Friday.

Powerball also will add a feature to the game called Double Play, which costs an extra $1 and offers a chance to win additional prizes of up to $10 million. Double Play initially will be offered in Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and Puerto Rico.

The chance of winning a Powerball jackpot will remain exceedingly slim, at one in 292.2 million.