Sales Grow As Powerball Jackpot Soars To $900 Million

Lottery officials said Saturday that the jackpot has reached $900 million.

The drawing will be held at 10:59 p.m. EST Saturday.

The victor can choose to be paid the full jackpot in annual instalments over 29 years – or take a lower one-off payment in cash.

But no one won, and as more people chose to get in on the action, the jackpot eclipsed the previous North American record of $656 million, which was set in 2012. If no one matches all the numbers, the next drawing, on Wednesday, is expected to soar to $1.3 billion ($1.86 billion).

Another big advantage of the annuity versus the lump sum – besides the fact that you’ll collect millions of dollars more – is that you can’t blow all the winnings as fast. Tedd Lokenberg IV, another Jiffy Mart employee, said co-workers at Modern Design, where he also works, had formed a pool and bought a passel of Powerball tickets.

“That’s a lot of money for someone to win”, she said. Minnesota sales for tonight’s drawing are estimated to be $12 million.

The quick answers are that as long as your ticket shows that it is for the drawing on January 9, 2016, you are good to go.

One New Jersey man took a more realistic view than some of his lottery cohorts across the U.S.

A surge of ticket-buyers has kept him busy since mid-week – to the tune of about 500 tickets per day.

It’s been growing since the last Powerball jackpot victor on November 4 and is still climbing.

“Right now, we have a ticket buying frenzy”, said Ron Wasserstein, the executive director of the American Statistical Association.

The chances of getting a winning ticket are one in 292 million.

The bigger prizes draw more players, who in turn make the jackpots even bigger.

Despite the odds, someone will eventually win the prize. The organization then claims the jackpot without revealing the name of the actual victor. Because the payout is based on sales, the prize grows as people rush to a shot at millions. It’s a nail-biting, toe-tapping experience, seeing the lotto balls reveal who could be a mega-millionaire.

Powerball is played in 44 states as well as the District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.