With no one matching all the numbers picked in Saturday night’s Powerball drawing, the grand prize for the multi-state lottery game is now the highest in the game’s history, at an estimated $425 million.
"This is the largest Powerball prize in the history of Powerball," said Illinois Lottery Superintendent Michael Jones on Sunday.
The last time someone won a Powerball jackpot was on Oct. 3, when a player in Delaware won $50 million, according to the Illinois Lottery. The biggest grand prize ever in the history of the Powerball game was $365 million, won in 2006 by eight workers at a Nebraska meatpacking plant.
Jones said it's only the second time a U.S. jackpot has exceeded $400 million. The first time was in April when the Mega Millions jackpot reached a record $656 Million.
Saturday night’s grand prize of $325 million was the fourth-highest in the game’s history. The winning numbers were: 22 - 32 - 37 - 44 and 50, and the Power Ball number was 34.
"If you're lucky and you can win, that's a tremendous amount of work," said Jones. "But if you don't win, all the money from the sale of Powerball tickets in Illinois goes toward the common school fund or to bridges and roads, which is the idea behind the lottery, to raise money for the common good."
The slim chances of winning is not slowing people down from buying a ticket, which includes a chance at changing their fortune.
"I would buy everyone in my family whatever they wanted," said a man purchasing a lottery ticket inside a 7-Eleven store.
The closest anyone in Illinois came to collecting the jackpot Saturday night were the five players who matched four of five numbers and the Power Ball, according to the Illinois Lottery. Those five players will each receive $10,000.
And while it may be fun to dream about what you’d do with $425 million -- or more if ticket sales drive the jackpot even higher -- if you match every number picked this Wednesday in the next Powerball drawing, the odds really aren’t in your favor. The odds of winning that jackpot are 1 in 175 million, according to the Illinois Lottery.
