The price of a Mega Millions ticket will go up from $2 to $5 in April. The government says this will improve chance, make prizes bigger, and give more money to California public schools.
Joshua Johnston, general manager of the Mega Millions Consortium, told The Times that the price increase is due to a desire to make jackpots grow faster and bigger and to set Mega Millions apart from other lotto games.
People really start to buy when prizes reach $700 million or $800 million, and they go crazy when they reach $1 billion. It is clear that people want to win those huge jackpots.
Mega Millions will also change the chance of winning from one in 302.6 million to something a little less crazy.
The exact details of the new chances will be made public in February. He did say that one of the changes will be fewer balls will be used in the drawings.
He also said that the new odds for Mega Millions will be better than the present odds of 1 in 292.2 million for Powerball.
Mega Millions will also add a built-in bonus to every ticket, which can increase wins that are not the jackpot by up to 10 times. Break-even tickets will no longer be allowed in the game. This means that when a player wins, they will always win more than the ticket price.
“Once the new rules are put into place, the jackpot will grow faster, making more people billionaires,” Johnston said. “And with that built-in multiplier, we will be making more millionaires every week since more money is leaving the company.”
Mega Millions and Powerball are both lotto games that are played in 45 states. The Multi-State lotto Association is in charge of both games. The group told The Times that there are no plans to raise the $2 price of a Powerball ticket at this time.
Officials say that since it began in 2002, Mega Millions has had six winners of jackpots worth a billion dollars. In 2017, ticket prices went up from $1 to $2. Since then, the game has made more than 1,200 millionaires, or three millionaires every week on average.
Johnston said that the money made from Mega Million ticket sales will likely go up by 25% after the price rise.
Each state’s lottery sales give some of the money they make to schools or other good causes. The California Lottery says that 40% of sale proceeds help fund public schools in the state.
In California, 80 cents of every Mega Millions ticket sold now goes to school. Carolyn Becker, a spokeswoman for the California Lottery, said that price will go up to about $2 per ticket in April.
We think this is a good idea for both our players and our goal to raise extra money for public schools,” Harjinder K. Shergill Chima, director of the California Lottery, said in a statement.
“We expect Mega Millions sales to go up, which will mean more money for schools. This is because the jackpots will grow even faster and be bigger.”
Becker said that the California Lottery Commission will have to approve the change in Mega Millions prices at a meeting that is coming up soon. She did say that she was “very sure” that the committee would agree that the change was a good one.
