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UNITED STATES – What would you do with more than a billion euros? This is the question that everyone is asking in the United States where it is possible to win the jackpot of 1.15 billion dollars (or 1.1 billion euros) thanks to Mega Millions, this American lottery which takes place this Friday, December 27.
“If I have the chance to win a billion dollars, I will buy buildings or an island”says Kenneth, this resident of New York who came to buy a ticket for the lottery, as you can see in the video at the top of the article. For John, another resident of New York, the winner would rather be discreet: “I think the first thing people should do if they win is find a good lawyer and shut up.”
And for good reason, this amount represents the fifth largest gain in the history of the game. The absolute record amounts to 1.602 billion dollars and was won on August 8, 2023 by a resident of Florida.
A jackpot back in play for three months
But how can we get to $1.15 billion up for grabs? The last draw was won by a Texan last September. He was thus able to pocket the tidy sum of 810 million dollars. But since then, there has been no winner, so it has been more than 100 days that the winnings have been growing, at the rate of two draws per week (Tuesday and Friday).
Joshua Johnston, senior director of the Mega Millions Consortium, hopes to benefit from the holiday effect: “We know that many people will likely receive tickets to Friday's drawing as a Christmas present, and what a gift it would be if you ended up with a ticket worth a jackpot of $1.15 billion.”he said in a company press release.
This is the seventh time in the history of this lottery, created in 2002, that the winnings have exceeded a billion dollars. The principle is simple: you just have to check five numbers between 1 and 70, as well as an additional number called « Mega Ball »between 1 and 25. If the rules are simple, the chance of winning the jackpot is much slimmer since it is 1 in more than 302 million, according to Mega Million. For comparison, the odds of winning the Euromillions are 1 in 139 million.
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