$1.5-Billion Powerball Jackpot, Drawing Wednesday Night

With the huge Powerball jackpot up for grabs, the Nebraska Lottery wants ticket buyers to know it’s just a game. $1.5 billion is about the net worth of the guys who created Snapchat, or the guy who invented Netscape…kids Netscape was how your parents used to get on the internet.

Pick 3 winners receive $500 for a $1 straight bet and the odds of winning are 1-in-1,000.

Lottery retailers earn 12 cents on each $2 Powerball ticket sold.

It took just four months.

On 10:59 p.m. ET, the Powerball draw will reveal the winning numbers by randomly selecting five white balls from a drum of 69 options and a red ball from a different drum of 26 options.

There have been reports of warnings at the border that you can buy a Powerball ticket and take it back to Canada, but then you can’t bring it back into the U.S.

The federal government will tax 25 percent of your winnings.

People across the Midstate are crossing their fingers and hoping they get lucky in Wednesday’s Powerball drawing.

Lottery changed the odds of matching all the Powerball numbers last fall: The former one in 175 million odds were replaced with a seemingly impossible one in 292.2 million chance.

All six numbers must be correct to win, but the first five can be in any order. If you opt for the lump sum – which most people do, according to Powerball – the payment amount would be $930 million.

The numbers for what is the largest lottery jackpot ever will be drawn tonight. If the winner’s in California, state income taxes would come out, too. But more alarming is the news that many people who won a million dollars previous year never came forward.

“What we’ve seen in the past when we’ve had other record jackpots, the ticket sales increase significantly and the transfers we make to the beneficiary funds are also increased”, Watson says.