Win Thu, right, buys a powerball ticket from Sheila Dey in the Queens borough of New York City.
By Andrew Rafferty, Erin McClam, Elisha Fieldstadt and Gillian Spear, NBC News
Chances are you didn’t win, but someone — more than one someone — did.
Lottery officials announced that three winning tickets were sold for Wednesday’s Powerball jackpot of $448 million, the fourth largest lotto jackpot ever — two in New Jersey and one in Minnesota.
The winning numbers were 5-25-30-58-59 with Powerball 32.
A string of no-win weeks in the past year have allowed jackpots to grow to dizzying heights. The top four lottery prizes ever in the United States have come since March 2012, when the record was set with a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot. The next three top jackpots, all for Powerball, have come in the past nine months and follow that lottery’s January 2012 revamp, which changed the price of a ticket from $1 to $2.
The pricing move was designed to boost both revenue and jackpots, with the understanding that fewer people would play because the cost of a ticket doubled, Chuck Strutt, head of the Multi-State Lottery Association, said. Lotto officials estimated that Powerball participation would decrease around 35 percent as a result in the price increase.
But Strutt said the headlines nabbed by these life-altering sums of money have helped pull in players who may otherwise have sat on the sidelines.
“It’s been a lucky year for the Powerball,” he said.
Profits have increased more than 50 percent since the rules change, with the game raking in $5.9 billion last fiscal year.
“A lottery game does depend on luck. A year with a lot of hits of small jackpots, that would have probably kept a lot of people from buying,” he added.
Left: Shirley Marano, after purchasing a Powerball ticket in Flushing, Queens in New York City. “Number one, I like to gamble. And if I win, my husband and I will share it. Travel maybe, buy a car. I wouldn’t buy a house. At my age, 76, it doesn’t pay to buy a house. I’d probably give it to my grand niece. Once in a while I buy a lottery ticket. I like to take chances. I like to travel. I’m an Aries, Aries people like to travel. I’d probably take a trip to Hawaii. You get a different kind of tan I heard, why is that?”
Right: Ryan Zhang, after purchasing a Powerball ticket in Flushing, Queens in New York City. “I’m not a regular buyer. Just for fun – my wife just sent me a text saying ‘powerball is 425 Million.’ Two dollars is nothing, why not?”
The high numbers bring out players like Garrick Montenegro, who on Wednesday had just bought his ticket in New York City.
He said he only plays when “my wife says you gotta go play, at probably like 250.” He bought $22 worth after asking the clerk how much it cost to for a ticket.
“I don’t really pay attention to it because I know I’m not going to win,” the pessimist lamented.
But the $200 million mark is the “magic number” to get even the biggest Debbie-downers motivated enough to buy a ticket, said Terry Rich, CEO of the Iowa lottery and a Powerball board member.
“The occasional players are just huge when sums are at these high levels,” he said.
The numbers can make a player’s mind drift away to that dream vacation or an entirely new life.
“If I win, my husband and I will share it. Travel maybe, buy a car. I wouldn’t buy a house. At my age, 76, it doesn’t pay to buy a house,” said Shirley Marano, who bought a ticket in New York City on Wednesday.
Stella Eastman, a mother of three, promised her kids something fun if her ticket turned out to have the winning numbers.
“They’re little,” she said. “So maybe Disneyland.”
Jamie Wheeler picked up $20 worth of tickets and had a simpler plan: “I would drink a lot.”
Some chose their numbers — five picks, plus the Powerball — at cash registers where they hoped lightning would strike twice. The big prize drew customers to a grocery store in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that sold a $241 million Powerball ticket last year.
“I do have customers that they do come here specifically when the numbers get higher,” Jason Busswitz, manager of the store, a Hy-Vee, told The Associated Press. “For some individuals, it does create a little more excitement around the Powerball machine.”
Left: Norm Chin after buying a Powerball ticket in Flushing, Queens in New York City. “I only play when it’s big, when it gets past $200 million. At $100 million I might as well just play my Mega [rather than Powerball], I think the odds are better. Probably I’d travel, I love to travel. Spain or Portugal, I haven’t been there.”
Right: Wallace Washington, after buying a Powerball ticket in Flushing, Queens in New York City. “I’m a lottery junkie, I play all of ’em. If I could win $5 I’d be happy. Chances are so slim, but if I’m in it, I’m happy. I’d retire. Family would be right there, lost cousins. But family comes first.”
Mike Lugo of New York, who bought $20 worth of tickets for himself and put $60 into an office pool, has a different strategy — he spreads his purchases around.
“I guess I don’t have a lucky spot,” he said, “’cause I seem to keep missing it.”
The fattest payout to a single winner was earlier this year, in May, when a woman in line at a Publix supermarket in Florida allowed an 84-year-old widow named Gloria McKenzie to go ahead of her in line.
McKenzie chose the randomized Quick Pick option and hit the $590 million jackpot.
Winners in Missouri and Arizona split a $587 million Powerball prize in November 2012.
At a Pennsylvania 7-Eleven that sold a $1 million Powerball ticket last week, customers hoped the good luck would continue.
“The manager said people were pouring into her store wanting to buy lottery tickets,” Margaret Chabris, a spokeswoman for the convenience store chain, told the AP. “They were of course really excited that one of their customers had won.”
The $425 million Powerball jackpot has thousands lining up to buy tickets across the country, but it’s Pennsylvania that has the history of being the luckiest state with 16 winners. NBC’s Lester Holt reports.
The drama perhaps pales only to Spain, where the annual Christmas lottery, known as El Gordo, or The Fat One, paid about $3.3 billion in tax-free awards last year. The top prize for each winner was $529,000.
In Spain, tens of millions of people watch on TV as schoolchildren sing the winning numbers. In the United States, it’s the standard ping-pong balls bouncing around a machine.
But prizes that reach high into the hundreds of millions of dollars have the potential to hurt the lottery in the long run. Officials worry about what they call “lottery fatigue,” the idea that once people keep seeing these amounts, they lose interest in lesser jackpots.
“People do become jaded, they lose interest in the smaller amounts,” said Strutt.
To help overcome that, the rules change also created the opportunity for million dollar winners who match all five white balls but not the Powerball. Since the new rule went into place, 767 million dollar tickets have been sold.
And the odds are long to say the least. The chances of picking a winning Powerball ticket are roughly one in about 175 million. You are exponent
ially more likely to die of a hornet sting or be born with an extra finger.
Courtesy: NBC