NEW YORK - The United States Powerball jackpot has grown to a massive US$1.9 billion (S$2.7 billion) after no one won Saturday’s already record prize.
The winning numbers were 28, 45, 53, 56 and 69, with a Powerball of 20.
With no ticket matching the five numbers and the Powerball, the pot rolls over with a grand prize of US$1.9 billion up for grabs in Monday’s draw, organisers said.
The Powerball jackpot is the biggest ever amassed, surpassing the already record US$1.6 billion which went unclaimed in Saturday’s draw.
The odds of winning the jackpot are still one in 292.2 million, the organisers said. If there are duplicate winners who select the same combination of numbers, they would share the jackpot.
While no one claimed the big prize on Saturday, 16 tickets matched the five main numbers to win US$1 million each.
It costs US$2 to buy a Powerball ticket, and a winner could choose a lump sum payment, calculated for Monday’s jackpot at US$929 million. Or they could opt for payments over 29 years.
Ahead of the Saturday draw, the US$1.6 billion jackpot set off a frenzy of ticket buying nationwide by routine lottery players and even some sceptics, hopeful that the one-in-292.2-million odds of winning will tilt in their favour.
The winner would receive the largest payout in US lottery history, eclipsing the US$1.586 billion payout in 2016 to three Powerball winners in California, Florida and Tennessee, which set a world record, officials said.
At a Marathon gas station in Coral Gables, Florida, just outside Miami, the buzz from customers last Thursday inspired cashier Saria Lopez to buy a Powerball ticket, which she said she usually does not do.
“One is enough, with luck,” Ms Lopez, 60, said in Spanish.
She said the jackpot is a lot of money for just one person and that if she won, she would share her winnings with her family and people who may be in need.
And if one of her customers bought the winning ticket from her, “I hope they come back and bring me a nice gift”, she said.
At a Chevron gas station in Miami last Thursday, Mr Ruben Perez, 82, played a scratch-off ticket and fantasised about what he would do if one of the five Powerball tickets he bought had the winning numbers.
He said he would “take my wife and go somewhere better” than Miami, where he has lived for 20 years. One possible destination, he said, would be his wife’s native Honduras.
Mr Perez, a former police officer and a long-time Powerball player, said he usually spends about US$50 a week on the tickets.
“If I don’t have that, I will only play one ticket,” he said. “It takes only one ticket to win.”
“I just hope somebody that needs it, gets it,” he added. “Even if it’s not me.”
In Franklin County and Oneida County, Idaho, which draw Powerball players from neighbouring Utah, ticket sales were up 597 per cent this past week compared with “a more traditional week a month ago”, when the jackpot was around US$354 million, Mr David Workman, a spokesman for the Idaho Lottery, said in an e-mail.
In the Brooklyn borough of New York last Friday, Powerball tickets were selling in a trickle at bodegas and liquor stores across Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Mr Y. Patel, the owner of GB Convenience Store & Deli, said that ahead of a Mega Millions drawing a couple of months ago, people were spending US$40 to US$50 on tickets. This past week, though, Powerball sales have been about the same as normal, he said, noting that he had sold only two tickets as at Friday afternoon.
“No one thinks they are going to win,” Mr Patel said.
The last Powerball jackpot was won on Aug 3, with a winner in Pennsylvania claiming the US$207 million prize.
In Miami, Ms Janice Lusky Greenspan said she plays the lottery a few times each year, usually buying five or 10 tickets at a time, but the record Powerball jackpot inspired her to buy 15 tickets at a Publix supermarket last Thursday morning after she dropped her son off at his high school.
“First thing I do after I win?” she said. “Change my phone number.” NYTIMES
