“That was the intention of those changes.” By changing those matrices, the odds of winning the jackpots changed. “It was, by design, to fuel bigger jackpots,” Carolyn Becker, deputy director of public affairs and communications for the California Lottery tells Nexstar.
If there were frequent jackpot winners, the games would never be able to build to these record-setting levels.Ĭertain rule changes – Powerball changed the main pool of numbers from 59 to 69 and the Powerball pool from 35 to 26 in 2015, and Mega Millions changed its main pool from 75 to 70, and Mega Ball from 15 to 25 in 2017 – have also had an impact. It’s largely due to how the games are structured.īoth Powerball and Mega Millions are designed to go multiple drawings without a jackpot winner – jackpot odds are 1 in 292.2 million for Powerball and 1 in 302.6 million for Mega Millions. Who won the $1.35B Mega Millions jackpot? We may never actually know
