POWERBALL: Winning ticket for $759M jackpot sold in Massachusetts

DES MOINES, Iowa — Lottery players across the U.S. scooped up $2 Powerball tickets in hopes of beating the odds and winning a massive $758.7 million jackpot in Wednesday night's drawing.

WINNING NUMBERS

The lucky numbers from Wednesday night's drawing are 6, 7, 16, 23 and 26, and the Powerball number was 4.

Massachusetts State Lottery officials have corrected the site where the single winning ticket for the Powerball $758.7 million jackpot was sold to Chicopee, not Watertown.

The Massachusetts State Lottery had announced around 2:30 a.m. Thursday that a convenience store in Watertown, near Boston, had sold the winning ticket.

But shortly before 8 a.m., the lottery said it had made a mistake, and that the winning ticket was sold across the state at the Pride Station & Store in Chicopee, in Western Massachusetts.

The lottery did not say how the error was made .

It said the store in Watertown did sell a ticket that won a $1 million prize.

Powerball Product Group Chair Charlie McIntyre says the $758.7 million jackpot claimed by a ticket sold in Massachusetts is the largest grand prize won by a single lottery ticket in U.S. history.

In a statement early Thursday, McIntyre also says six other tickets won $2 million apiece, and 34 more are worth $1 million.

Tickets sold in Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia won a Match 5 Power Play prize of $2 million. Tickets sold in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia won the Match 5 prize of $1 million.

Lottery officials also said there were six $200,000 prizes and nine $50,000 prizes won in North Carolina in Wednesday's drawing.

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Powerball fever

The jackpot is the second-largest in Powerball game history and the second-largest among lottery jackpots in North America.

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The Powerball jackpot hit $650 million Sunday after nobody won Saturday’s drawing.

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It was previously at $541.9M.

It's been more than two months since the last time someone matched all five numbers plus the Powerball.

Channel 9 reporter Greg Suskin visited a store in Rock Hill Wednesday that draws a bigger crowd than some others. A few years ago, Mr. Express on Mt. Gallant Road sold a $1 million Powerball ticket.

Since then, it's had a lucky reputation.

Just about everyone who walked up to the register Wednesday morning bought a Powerball ticket with their purchase.

One man told Suskin he plays all the time, every week, no matter what the jackpot is.

"Like I say, ‘Man, you can't win unless you're in, so don't procrastinate,’” he said. “Throw a couple bucks in there. You're gonna waste a couple of bucks anyway."

Lottery officials expect the jackpot number to jump to a billion dollars if no one takes home the top prize.

“It's big,” Craig Monroe said. “It's big, so I wanted to play.”

“These are the lotto tickets, how confident, I'm very confident,” Pamela Burris said.

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WHEN IS THE DRAWING AND HOW DOES THE GAME WORK?

The drawing will be Wednesday at 10:59 p.m. Eastern Time in Tallahassee, Florida. Five white balls will be drawn from a drum containing 69 balls and one red ball will be selected from a drum with 26 balls. To win, players need to have paid $2 for a ticket and either have chosen numbers or opted to let a computer make a random choice.

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THE PRIZE

The jackpot is listed as $700 million, but that refers to the annuity option, doled out in 30 payments over 29 years. Nearly all winners favor the cash option, which pays significantly less. For the current jackpot, the cash prize would be $443.3 million.

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THE ODDS

The odds of winning are one in 292.2 million. Tom Rietz, a professor at the University of Iowa who researches probabilities, says one way to think about it is to envision the 324 million U.S. residents. Your chance of winning is roughly comparable to being that one lucky person out of the entire population, with everyone else losing.

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TAXES

Federal income taxes will take a 25 percent bite from winnings. State taxes vary, so the amount winners will pay in taxes depends on where they play. Some of the nation's biggest states, including California and Texas, don't assess state taxes on lottery prizes, so winners in those spots would be just a bit richer.

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WHAT IF I MATCH SOME BUT NOT ALL THE NUMBERS?

Face it, you're almost certainly not going to win the jackpot, but players have much better odds of one in 25 of winning a lesser prize. Those odds range from one in 11.7 million of winning $1 million for matching the five regular balls to one in 38 for matching the Powerball and winning $4.

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WHAT'S THE POINT OF POWERBALL?

Amid all the talk about sudden wealth, it's easy to forget that the purpose of Powerball is to raise money for government programs in the 44 states where the game is played, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Each jurisdiction decides how to spend the money raised by Powerball and other lottery games, with some funding college scholarships, others spending the money on transportation and many using it for general state programs.

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WHAT DOES POWERBALL TICKET SALES GO TOWARD?

In North Carolina, all of the ticket sales benefit education.

State officials said in the 2016 fiscal year, Mecklenburg County received more than $49 million from lotto funds. About $30 million of that went to non-instructional support, like office assistants and substitute teachers and about $10 million went toward school construction, $4.7 million to pre-kindergarten, $2.7 million to college scholarships and $1.2 million toward financial aid.

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