Last night’s giant Mega Millions® jackpot was won with a ticket in Florida, and 2 Iowa tickets were just one number away from a share of the big prize. The Iowa tickets both matched four of the five white balls and the Mega Ball®.
The winning numbers in last night’s drawing were: 13-19-20-32-33 and Mega Ball 14. The Megaplier® number was 2. The jackpot ended up at $1.602 billion annuity, $794.2 million cash option. Strong sales pushed the final jackpot amount even higher than the latest estimates before the drawing.
Last night’s jackpot was the largest ever offered in the Mega Millions game and came less than a month after a $1.08 billion Powerball® jackpot was won in that game’s July 19 drawing.
The Mega Millions jackpot returns to $20 million annuity, $9.9 million cash option, for the game’s next drawing on Friday.
Total Prizes Won In Iowa
Iowa Lottery players won a total of 56,034 prizes in last night’s drawing. Two tickets in Iowa matched four of the first five numbers and the Mega Ball to win a prize of $10,000 each. But whoever bought one of the tickets added the Megaplier option to the play, which multiplied the prize to $20,000.
The $10,000-winning ticket was purchased at Kwik Star, 111 E. Donald St. in Waterloo; while the $20,000-winning ticket was purchased at Casey’s, 1801 Washington Ave. in Iowa Falls.
Iowa Sales For Last Night’s Drawing
Iowa Lottery players bought more than $3.1 million in Mega Millions tickets for last night’s drawing, including nearly $1.7 million in tickets yesterday alone.
But the average Mega Millions purchase in Iowa for the drawing remained about $6, or about 3 plays per ticket.
A Note About ‘Coverage’
By tracking sales, lottery officials can estimate how many of all the possible combinations in the game have been purchased for a particular drawing. The term involved is coverage – how many of the combinations have been “covered.” The coverage estimate for Tuesday’s drawing was about 41 percent. (The odds of winning the jackpot in Mega Millions are about 1 in 302.6 million because that’s how many ways the numbers in the game can be combined to make a play.)
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