Mega Millions Lottery

The Mega Millions lottery is one the two largest lotteries in America that takes place across 36 different jurisdictions. Each week there are two seperate Mega Million draws held every Tuesday and Friday and unlike the UK National Lottery the Mega Millions prize starts off with a guaranteed $12 million. To be in with a chance of winning players have to match five numbers ranging between 1 and 56 and one Mega Ball number ranging between 1 and 46. In the event of there being more then one winner the prize is split equally between all winning tickets.

The Mega Million draw is not all about the one big prize though as there are eight additional prize levels based on the number of balls matched. The actual odds of winning the main draw are 1 in 175,711,536 but these odds improve as the numbers of balls matched drops. The actual odds of a player winning any of the Mega Million prizes is just 1 in 40.

Mega Millions and the Megaplier

In some American states there is the option of purchasing a Megaplier option that multiplies all none jackpot prizes by two, three or even four times their original amount based on a number that is drawn randomly during the draw but this also increases the cost of the original ticket e.g. if the multiplier number drawn is four and a player has a non jackpot ticket the prize will be multiplied by four, so a $10,000 win will be boosted to $40,000.

This Mega Millions draw has the potential to produce huge jackpots; A $390 million prize was split between two players in March of 2007 and in August last year $336 million was spit between two tickets, one purchased in California and the other in New York. The current jackpot sits at an estimated $166 million.

Mega Millions and other Lotteries

Before 2010, states were only allowed to offer either the Mega Million draw or the Powerball lottery but now they have the option of offering both lotteries in a megapower lottery combination. The state of New Jersey was the first state to produce winners in both games. Euromillions which is the European lottery regularly has rollover jackpots and has produced many multi-millionaires since it was launched in February 2004. The Superenalotto which is Italy's own exclusive lottery has also seen massive jackpots when rollovers occur.