A new billionaire in the United States, thanks… to the lottery. A Florida player has indeed pocketed the tidy sum of 1.58 billion dollars (1.44 billion euros) in the Mega Millions game. With this gain, he enters the history of this lottery since the record is broken. The previous holder of the title of biggest winner of Mega Millions had obtained a jackpot of 1.537 billion dollars in 2018.
“After 31 draws without a winner, one lucky ticket holder in Florida will celebrate the summer of 2023 with a record jackpot, currently estimated at 1.58 billion,” the lottery wrote in a statement Tuesday.
According to ABC News, this amount, if confirmed, will be the third largest jackpot in US lottery history. In November 2022, a player in California won $2.04 billion in the Powerball lottery.
The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are one in 303 million, even smaller than the odds of being struck by lightning (one in a million), according to data from US health authorities.
The lucky winner, who has not been identified, can choose to cash in 783 million euros all at once or receive all the winnings in annual payments spread over thirty years. The ticket for this lottery, organized in almost all American states, costs 2 dollars.
