DES MOINES, Iowa --
There was no winner in Saturday night's Powerball. Wednesday's jackpot will grow to $1.3 billion with a cash value of $806 million.
Powerball announced the six winning numbers for a record jackpot of nearly $950 million on Saturday, setting off a scramble among hopeful lottery players across the country to check if they held a lucky ticket.
The winning numbers - disclosed live on television and online - were 16-19-32-34-57 and the Powerball number 13. All six numbers must be correct to win, although the first five can be in any order.
Cripe said the estimated size of the jackpot reached $949.8 million, the largest lottery prize in U.S. history. Earlier in the day, the Multi-State Lottery Association had said the jackpot was $900 million.
LOS ANGELES, (Reuters) – Winning tickets in the nearly $1.6-billion Powerball lottery were sold in California, Florida and Tennessee, officials said today, leaving at least three people to split the record-setting jackpot.
California Lottery officials confirmed that the winning six numbers had been purchased at a convenience store outside Los Angeles, as well as at locations in Florida and Tennessee. The identity of the winners was not yet known.
Lottery officials said it could be several hours before it is known whether there are other winners in the 44 states, Washington, D.C. and two U.S. territories where Powerball is played.
The six winning numbers were 08, 27, 34, 04, 19 and Powerball 10. They were picked during a late Wednesday draw for the $1.586 billion prize at lottery offices in Tallahassee, Florida.
In Chino Hills, a suburb east of Los Angeles, crowds descended on a 7-Eleven store where the winning ticket had been bought, snapping pictures and congratulating staff. The store will receive a $1-million bonus for selling the ticket.
The odds of picking a winning combination were 1 in 292 million.
The prospect of a huge payout sparked a ticket-buying frenzy that was expected to reach a rate of $1.3 million per minute during the evening commuter rush hour, Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas lottery, told a news conference.
Powerball sales were “exponentially higher†than normal, Grief said. Since the jackpot was last hit on Nov. 4, 2015, a total of $2.65 billion worth of Powerball tickets has been sold, he added.
“If I win, I’ll give it all away to poor people,†said New York restaurant deliveryman Oscan Gamie, 43, after buying a dozen of the $2 tickets at a midtown Manhattan grocery.
Tatiann Cave, a 23-year-old home health aide, said she would use the jackpot to start her own cosmetics business. “I’d like to quit my job and do something inspiring,†Cave said.
For every $1 worth of Powerball sales, half goes to prizes, 40 percent to causes such as education, and 10 percent to retailers who sell the tickets and other administrative costs, Grief said.
Those three people are extremely lucky though I do hoped more people could have won the jackpot. But I guess three people is okay though, at least it's more than one, lol. Those odds of winning are extremely high but they managed to beat those odds. How I wonder if maybe we should have joined that lottery, maybe we could have won something. Sadly, I don't really gamble in such events. I don't think I'm lucky with such gambles though some people are.
The things I would do with that amount of money...
I would probably go back and buy the store that sold me the ticket. The I would give a million dollars to the guy who sold it to me. Then I'd probably throw it in the air and start dancing all over the place. I can't imagine how it must feel to have that kind of money
