Check those tickets: Mega Millions $1.6B jackpot numbers are in
Sarah Rahal
They're in. The winning numbers for the world-record Mega Millions jackpot were drawn late Tuesday and they are: 05-28-62-65-70 with a Mega Ball of 05.
Before the scramble to scrutinize millions of tickets sold for winners, an average of 325,000 tickets were sold every hour in the state ahead of the drawing, which reached $1.6 billion, Lottery officials said.
By Tuesday afternoon, Michigan players had bought nearly 3.2 million Mega Millions tickets on Tuesday alone, said Jeff Holyfield, spokesman for the Michigan Lottery. That's a total of 7.4 million tickets bought in the state.
"So far today, the peak hour for purchases was from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., when players bought about 600,000 tickets or 10,000 per minute," Holyfield said.
The odds are enormous, one in 302.5 million.
Players bought 9.8 million tickets for Friday night’s drawing, when the jackpot was $1 billion. The bulk of those tickets, 7 million, were purchased Friday, the day of the drawing.
Holyfield said the pattern is typical: The majority of tickets for a big jackpot are purchased on the day of the drawing.
Players had until 10:45 p.m. Tuesday to buy tickets at retailers or online for Tuesday night’s drawing.
If a player were to win the $1.6 billion jackpot, a lump-sum cash option would be $904.9 million, the lottery bureau said. The net for that after required tax withholdings would be $650 million.
That cash option alone would rank as the third-largest lottery prize in U.S. history. The jackpot amount is based on an escalating annuity: an initial payment, then 29 annual payments. With the annuity, the first payment would about $24 million and the 30th payment would be about $99 million.
If there is no winner for Tuesday's drawing, Friday’s jackpot is projected to be $2 billion. The cash option would be $1.1 billion with the net after tax withholdings of $820 million.
The Mega Millions jackpot was the largest in U.S. history. The second largest was the $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot won on Jan. 13, 2016 (California, Florida, and Tennessee).
srahal@detroitnews.com
Twitter:@SarahRahal_