The next couple of days could see some massive lottery jackpots being won. If you fancy becoming a multi-millionaire then that might just happen this week. Winning a lottery jackpot is never easy of course, but some are much harder to win than others, especially if you play SuperEnalotto.
Tuesday May 11 sees the latest Mega Millions draw in the USA. There’s a massive $396 million jackpot on the line. All you need to do is match the five main balls and the Mega Ball and the jackpot has been won.
If you do win that fantastic prize, then you can either receive the $396 million as an annuity or a one-lump sum that will then be subject to taxation. The lump sum payment is $273.6 million so not a bad win to get your hands on. With the annuity route, there is one payment followed by one a year for the next 29 years in increasing amounts.
The Powerball draw takes place on Wednesday and Saturdays. From August though there’s going to be an extra draw held on a Monday. Tomorrow (May 12) sees a top prize of $168 million with a cash value of $117 million.
The last big win was in March when Thomas Yi from Florida managed to match the five main balls and the Powerball. The 23-year-old won a $235.4 million jackpot and took it as a one-time, lump-sum payment of $160,038,447.27.
These jackpots are high, but they are nothing compared to the highest Mega Millions and Powerball top prizes. Both draws have gone through the $1 billion mark in recent years. The record jackpot is the $1.5 billion jackpot shared by three ticket holders in a 2016 Powerball draw.
The Italian SuperEnalotto jackpot doesn’t reach that level but tonight’s draw has a €150.6 million top prize. This is one of the hardest lottery jackpots to win. Why? Well, there are 90 balls and that makes the odds of matching six main numbers are 1 in 622,614,630. That’s compared to 1 in 45,057,474 for a UK Lotto jackpot.
It’s interesting to make that comparison because Sisal, who run the Italian lottery are bidding to get the National Lottery licence. Would they employ the same methods in the UK if being granted that licence?
The SuperEnalotto jackpot was last won in July 2020. That’s despite their being three draws a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. There was a near miss in January with one ticket winning a €514,978 prize.
It takes a while for the jackpot to reach extremely high amounts. Each rollover sees the jackpot rise by just over a million euros. SuperEnalotto was launched 24 years ago but the jackpot has only been won 124 times and only twice since the start of 2020.
This is the eighth time that the SuperEnalotto jackpot has gone over the €100 million mark. The record win is €209 million won in 2019. On that occasion the draw had gone over a year without producing a jackpot winner.
Could you imagine that happening in the UK? There was enough fuss when ten extra main balls were added. ‘Another Rollover’ would become a rather tiresome headline after a while.
