Feeling lucky?
Wining a jackpot is a life changing experience. Due to its growing value, lucky winners may get a lifetime salary or a completely new life.
Biggest starting jackpots
On one hand, there are fixed jackpots such as the Texas Cash Five jackpot which is set at $25,000 USD, or Australia Monday Lotto set with $1 million prize. These fixed jackpots offer a lower prize for the winner, but the chances of winning that big prize are far better than the chances of winning a progressive jackpot.
On the other hand, to actually perceive how big these amounts of money could grow, we need to know where they all begin. After a jackpot is won, lottery’s jackpot prize resets as a starting jackpot which can keep growing with each rollover until it reaches the lottery’s maximum or it is won. The biggest starting jackpots come from the US and Europe. The first place of world’s biggest starting and awarded jackpot is held by Powerball and Mega Millions.
Powerball and Mega Millions are American lottery games available in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Both, Powerball’s and Mega Millions’ jackpot prizes reset to an estimated amount of $20 million USD each time they are won.
The second place holder of biggest starting prize belongs to The EuroMillions with starting €17 million, and the third- largest starting jackpot is another European lottery: EuroJackpot! The starting prize is €10 million with pretty big chances of winning.
Record setting wins in lottery
Even though the biggest lottery prizes are won by jackpot enthusiasts in the US and Europe, there are really appealing prizes won all over the globe.
The biggest jackpot in the World dates from 2016 and the record hasn’t been broken ever since. With a prize at $1.586 billion USD, US Powerball holds the first place of biggest jackpot in the entire world. The prize was split amongst three players from California, Tennessee and Florida, who each got to take home a $533 million part of the prize.
The following wins are the top 10 biggest jackpot in the entire world, all of them won in the US:
- Powerball Lottery with amount of $1.586 billion won on 13 January 2016
- Mega Millions Lottery with amount of $1.537 billion won on 23 October 2018
- Mega Millions Lottery with amount of $1.05 billion won on 22 January 2021
- Powerball Lottery with amount of $768.4 million won on 27 March 2019
- Powerball Lottery with amount of $758.7 million won on 23 August 2017
- Powerball Lottery with amount of $731.1 million won on 20 January 2021
- Powerball Lottery with amount of $699.8 million won on 4 October 2021
- Powerball Lottery with amount of $687.8 million won on 27 October 2018
- Mega Millions Lottery with amount of $656 million won on 20 March 2012
- Mega Millions Lottery with amount of $648 million won on 17 December 2013
Largest Jackpot Won by a Single Player
The largest Mega Millions’ jackpot won by a single player dates from 23 October 2018 with amount of $1.537 billion. You guessed it, it is the second on world’s breaking record in the whole World. It was a draw by a single player from the state of South Carolina who remains anonymous to this day.
The second largest prize won by a single player was $1.05 billion jackpot purchased in Michigan. This is also the third biggest jackpot ever won in the entire world.
What are the odds?
These huge amounts of money are the keystone when it comes to attracting lottery players. The size of the jackpot is a number one trigger when it comes to lottery, even though the higher the jackpot the lower the chances of winning. As we already know, jackpots of the US Powerball and Mega Million have been over $1.5 billion.
The Texas Cash Five’s modest $25,000 top prize means that the chances of winning the lottery are higher when the lotteries’ jackpots are lower and vice versa. Honestly, disregarding these small lotteries is a mistake that a lot of players make, since the smallest jackpots could bring a huge impact. Whilst the chances of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338 but still possible to win!