A Christmas Eve Powerball drawing could add new meaning to holiday cheer as millions of players hope to cash in on the $1.7 billion prize, which comes after months without a jackpot winner. This is the United States’ 4th-largest jackpot on record, following 46 consecutive draws without someone claiming all six numbers. The last contest with a jackpot winner was on Sept. 6.
The game’s long odds have people decking the halls and spending $2 and sometimes more on tickets ahead of Wednesday night’s live drawing at 10:59 p.m. EST. Chris Winters, a glass artist in Indianapolis, said Wednesday: “With the prize so high, I just bought one kind of impulsively. Why not?”
It’s a sign the game is operating as intended. Lottery officials made the odds tougher in 2015 as a mechanism for snowballing jackpots, while simultaneously making it easier to win smaller prizes.
The Christmas holiday is not expected to impact the drawing process should there be a winning ticket, a Powerball spokesperson said.
### Here is what to know about Wednesday’s drawing:
#### Christmas Eve Cha-Ching
That ticket placed in a stocking or under the tree could be worth a billion bucks — but with some caveats. Powerball is played in 45 states, along with Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Most of those areas require players to be 18 or older, though some states have higher age requirements. In Nebraska, players must be at least 19 years old, while in Louisiana and Arizona, people cannot buy tickets until they are 21.
Winning tickets must be cashed in the states where they were purchased. Players cannot buy tickets in Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, or Utah.
Other than that, lottery officials say there is a chance a lucky Powerball ticket could be a gift that keeps on giving. Charlie McIntyre, the New Hampshire Lottery’s executive director, said Tuesday: “Just think of the stories you can tell for generations to come about the year you woke up a billionaire on Christmas.”
In Indianapolis, Lee Means is also hoping for a miracle after securing his ticket. “The greatest gift for me would be to win some of this Powerball, you know?” he said.
#### A Range of Prizes Can Be Presents
Wednesday’s $1.7 billion jackpot has a cash value of $781.3 million. A winner can choose to be paid the whole amount through an annuity, which includes an immediate payment followed by annual payments over 29 years, increasing by 5% each time.
Most winners, however, usually opt for the cash value lump sum.
While the odds are steep for the top prize, there are smaller prizes players can win. At the last drawing, players in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Wisconsin each won $1 million.
There are also prizes outside the jackpot, ranging from a few dollars up to $2 million. One woman told Powerball officials that she already made plans for her $1 million win: “We’re going to pay off our cars and credit cards and get a bigger house!”
Thomas Anderson of Burlington, North Carolina, shared that he intended to use his $100,000 Powerball win from earlier this month to go back to school, according to Powerball.
#### Long Odds for the Billion-Dollar Jackpots
Lottery officials set the odds of winning the jackpot at 1 in 292.2 million, designed so jackpots roll over with each of the three weekly drawings until the prize pool balloons enough to attract more players.
The odds used to be more favorable at 1 in 175 million but were made tougher in 2015 to create these out-of-this-world jackpot amounts.
The tougher odds helped set the stage for back-to-back record-breaking sweepstakes this year. The last time someone won the Powerball pot was on Sept. 6, when players in Missouri and Texas split $1.787 billion, the second-highest top prize in U.S. history.
The U.S. has seen more than a dozen lottery jackpot prizes exceed $1 billion since 2016. The biggest U.S. jackpot ever was $2.04 billion in 2022.
#### More About Those Unfavorable Odds
It can be hard to grasp what odds of 1 in 292.2 million really mean. Even if halved, they remain daunting.
In the past, one math professor likened the odds to flipping a coin and getting heads 28 straight times.
Tim Chartier, a Davidson College math professor in North Carolina, compared the odds of a winning lottery ticket to selecting one marked dollar bill from a stack 19 miles (31 kilometers) high.
“It’s true that if you buy 100 tickets, you are 100 times more likely to win. But in this case, ‘100 times more likely’ barely moves the probability needle,” Chartier said. “Using the time analogy, buying 100 tickets is like getting 100 guesses to name that one chosen second over nine years. Possible but wildly improbable.”
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Associated Press videojournalist Obed Lamy in Indianapolis contributed to this report.
Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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