Not To Be Outdone By Sports Betting, Powerball Looks For More Frequent Billion-Dollar Jackpots

Future monster pots expected from increase in spending on game
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Brian served as a senior reporter and online content manager for Card Player Magazine for nearly a decade before joining USBets in October 2018. He is currently focused on legal and regulated sports betting and online gaming. He's an avid jiu-jitsu practitioner in his free time.

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A $1.58 billion Powerball drawing from 2016 is still the largest U.S. lottery jackpot to date, but its days may be numbered. You could probably bet on that record eventually falling.

On Aug. 23, Powerball kicked off an additional weekly drawing, bringing the number of drawings per week to three. In addition to Wednesday and Saturday drawings, players can now vie for prizes on Mondays. All 48 U.S. lotteries where the game is played will sell tickets for the Powerball drawings on Monday nights.

“This is the first time in Powerball’s 29-year history that drawings will be offered three nights a week,” said May Scheve Reardon, Powerball product group chair and Missouri Lottery executive director. “Players will still have the same odds and base ticket price, just more chances to get into the game.”

Powerball anticipates the Monday drawing will result in larger and faster-growing jackpots.

With three jackpots in U.S. lottery history passing the $1 billion mark in recent years, not much national media attention is given to jackpots that aren’t approaching record levels, especially in an era with so much national attention on an exploding sports betting market.

A $1 billion jackpot has in the past resulted in a national frenzy to buy tickets, even though playing for $2 a ticket (or $3 if you get the add-on to multiply non-jackpot prizes) likely still isn’t a value bet. While the jackpot soars, the chances of having to split a winning jackpot also increase. The record $1.58 billion jackpot was shared by three tickets. Taxes also take a hefty bite out of take-home winnings for any lucky lottery player.

A true billionaire has not yet been minted from any U.S. lottery drawing, with the largest single pre-tax payout thus far being $877.7 million from a 2018 Mega Millions ticket sold in South Carolina. The jackpot would need to be multiple billions of dollars for a lottery billionaire to be possible.

That would surely grab beaucoup headlines if it’s ever achieved.

Keeping pace with other forms of gambling?

The move by Powerball comes as more and more states authorize sports betting and regulated online casino gambling, offerings that Powerball and Mega Millions compete with for gambling dollars. Some states, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, have growing online lottery revenues alongside their online casino-style gambling markets. Powerball and Mega Millions can be played over the internet in some states.

You won’t hear Powerball or Mega Millions speak of sports betting or online casinos as direct competition, but they are, and in theory there is only so much gambling spend available in the U.S.

Also consider the booming sports betting industry’s popularizing of super longshot parlays, which don’t have odds as long as the roughly 1-in-300 million chance of winning a jackpot in Powerball or Mega Millions, but yet are still very improbable. Furthermore, some sportsbooks are finding some customers willing to bet on hugely improbable events like the Detroit Lions having the best record in the league this upcoming season, at a price of only +150000, which could be even more -EV than a Powerball ticket.

The pandemic saw a slowdown in the multi-state lottery jackpots in 2020, though in January of this year Mega Millions had a jackpot reach $1.05 billion and Powerball had a pot reach $731 million, good for third and sixth largest all-time in the U.S. Some states saw their lottery sales increase overall during the pandemic, which some credit to an influx of federal pandemic stimulus money, but the multi-state lottery jackpots suffered because of various pandemic-related restrictions across the country.

In fact, the multi-state lottery games reportedly were stuck in the wrong direction even prior to COVID-19. According to a report from CNBC, sales for Mega Millions were down 40% in the year after the $1.53 billion jackpot in 2018, the second largest ever, due at least in part to smaller pots that drew less media coverage.

Mega Millions hasn’t added an additional drawing, but it would be conceivable that it follows Powerball’s lead here. Mega Millions drawings are currently held on Tuesday and Friday evenings.

Alongside the addition of the Monday jackpot drawings, Powerball also added a new option called “double play” that will allow players in 13 states (and possibly more to come) to compete in a separate $10 million jackpot drawing for another $1. Gamblers play the same set of numbers in both the main Powerball drawing and double play drawing. Tickets are eligible to win prizes in both drawings.

Altogether, a Powerball player in those 13 states can play one set of numbers for a maximum total of $12 per week ($4 per drawing), up from $6 per week. Of course, players can spend as much as they want if using multiple sets of numbers. There are definitely concerns here for people suffering from addiction, who may significantly increase their spending on Powerball due to the extra weekly drawing.

Image: Shutterstock

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