One lucky Powerball player could win an eye-watering $820 million on Saturday night after no one won the jackpot Wednesday.
While the Powerball jackpot went untouched Wednesday night there were three winners of lesser prizes. A gambler in Kentucky took home $2 million on the Match 5 + Power Play and two other players, one in California and one in Florida, won the Match 5 worth $1 million.
The lotto prize has climbed from an estimated $779 million to $820 million with a new cash value of $383.5 million.
If you win the Powerball, you can decide between the lump-sum or annuity option. The jaw-dropping $820 million jackpot is the annuity option. If you choose this option, you will receive the money in 30 annual payments. The cash value option, $383.5 million, is the money you’ll receive if you choose the one-time, lump-sum payment.
Just this past September, a Powerball player in Missouri and another in Texas shared a nearly $1.8 billion jackpot. The unnamed player from Missouri said in a news release from the Missouri Lottery at the time, “I’m going to just do me for a year,” after his big win.
The Missouri man described himself as a “homebody,” jokingly saying that his wife is “going to drag me out of town now.”
The biggest Powerball jackpot in history, worth $2.04 billion, was won in November 2022 by Edwin Castro of California. The large prize also helped raise $156m for California’s public school system, drawn from ticket sales within the Golden State.
“As much as I am shocked and ecstatic to have won the Powerball drawing, the real winner is the California public school system,” Castro said in a statement following his record-breaking win.