WALTHAM, MA — Someone in Massachusetts won a really nice consolation prize over the weekend. Friday night's Mega Million's drawing saw three $1 million-winning tickets sold across the country — one of them from a Waltham convenience store.
That means someone who bought a ticket from Easy Convenience on Elm Street in Waltham picked the game's five lottery numbers for a $1 million prize, but failed to hit on the Mega Ball. If they had hit the Mega Ball, they would have won an estimated $339 million, with a cash payout of $210.6 million.
The winning numbers Friday were 5-17-28-32-63 with a Mega Ball of 11. The Megaplier was 3x, meaning if any of the $1 million winners played it, they would have won $3 million. None of them did.
The other $1 million winners were sold in Missouri and Texas.
Overall there were 913,599 winning tickets from Friday's drawing. The lottery doesn't announce all the details of the winners of lesser prizes, but there were 23 $10,000 prizes won in Friday's drawing, 573 $500 prizes and 1,702 $200. A tidy 588,580 won $2, which is just hitting the Mega Ball.
The jackpot for Tuesday, May 19, has grown to $367 million. The estimated cash payout is $228 million. The jackpot hasn't been won since March 12 in Missouri. Since then, there have been more than 11.8 million winning tickets overall, including 18 worth $1 million or more.
The odds of picking the correct numbers on five white balls and one yellow ball (the Mega Ball) are one in 302.6 million. No matter how many people play Mega Millions, the chances of winning never change. The chances of winning are based on the number combinations not the number of players buying tickets.
The Megaplier add-on, which costs an extra dollar, increases non-jackpot prizes by two to five times.
Players pick six numbers from two separate pools of numbers – five different numbers from 1 to 70 and one number from 1 to 25 (the Mega Ball number.) Players can also use an easy pick feature, where a computer selects random numbers for them. To win the jackpot, a player much match all six numbers.
Players who match some of the numbers could still win some money. Here is the payout schedule for lesser prizes, not including the Megaplier, which is different for each game:
Mega Millions tickets are $2 each and can be played in 44 states, Washington D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Lottery hopefuls had until 10:45 p.m. EST to buy tickets. The drawing is held at 11 p.m. EST in Atlanta.