Seeing the Mega Millions $1 billion jackpot may feel like deja vu. Because the current $1.05 billion prize up for grabs on Aug. 1 is $287 million less than this time in 2022 – when an Illinois ticket buyer won $1.337 billion.
On the Mega Millions site today, it shows the next estimated jackpot is $1.05 billion. If a ticket purchaser picks the single payout option, the lottery winner receives $527.9 million.
However, the date on Saturday’s announcement about the new jackpot bore only one digit’s difference from the July 29, 2022, press release about the $1.337 billion winner.
Yet that wasn’t today’s only coincidence.
Today, much like Nov. 7, 2022, when the Powerball jackpot sat at $1.9 billion, lottery losers had to return to work on a Monday.
Here’s how one Philadelphia resident expressed her disappointment about not winning Friday’s jackpot:
Welp, didn’t win mega millions YET AGAIN so here we are…another Monday. pic.twitter.com/7tmwMoM3jx
— Becca (She/Her) 👋🏻 (@HeyBMcCormick) July 31, 2023
However, unlike that Powerball jackpot that grew to $2.04 billion before a California ticket buyer won the prize that Monday night, the Mega Millions drawing won’t happen again until tomorrow.
Mega Millions $1 Billion Jackpot Could Grow
The Mega Millions $1 billion jackpot could grow before tomorrow’s drawing. There’s precedent for it from just a day before Saturday’s press release about the current prize total.
Many lottery ticket purchasers began Friday believing the jackpot was $910 million. Just before Friday’s drawing, Mega Millions revised its estimate to $940 million.
If there’s enough excitement about tomorrow’s drawing, the $1.05 billion estimate may also change.
However, Bonus repeatedly refreshing the Mega Millions site didn’t yield a different result today.
UPDATE: 08/01/2023
The Mega Millions jackpot stands at $1.1 billion today, with a cash prize of $550.2 million.
The drawing is at 11 p.m.
Ticket-Buying Frenzies Seem to Happen on Drawing Days
Lottery ticket buyers in 45 states, plus the District of Columbia and the US Virgin Islands, seem to get excited about large Mega Millions jackpots on the day of a drawing.
For instance, the thousands of visitors using the Mega Millions Generator page on Bonus this week to come up with their ticket numbers primarily did so on Tuesday and Friday. Those were the drawing days.
The last-minute mindset for huge jackpots coincides with another trend among Americans. Lottery ticket buyers who only get excited about $1 billion-plus prizes are having their wishes granted.
It’s no coincidence that tomorrow’s Mega Millions $1 billion jackpot is the fifth one since 2018.
As Bonus reported on Jan. 9, 2023:
In 2017, Mega Millions followed Powerball’s lead. It increased its ticket prices and added more number combinations, super-sizing its jackpots in the process. The change was smaller, but the odds for Mega Millions had been longer to begin with, going from 1 in 259 million before the change to 1 in 302.6 million.
When Will Mega Millions Rebrand to Mega Billions?
Mega Millions will likely never rebrand to “Mega Billions.”
Although technically, since “mega” means “million,” the game would have to produce a multi-trillion dollar jackpot to truthfully describe itself as Mega Millions. That is unless Mega Millions is describing the cumulative total jackpots awarded over time. However, even then, the lottery game would probably still be well short of “a million millions.”
Wanna Be a Billionaire
Just about every corner of social media sounds like this lyric Bruno Mars sings in Travie McCoy‘s song:
I wanna be a billionaire so f$*king bad
https://twitter.com/tweeziedoesit/status/1686072844436848649?s=20
However, unlike Mars, those buying tickets for the Mega Millions $1 billion jackpot may not already be multimillionaires.
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