LOS ANGELES, Calif. – There was no winner in Tuesday’s Mega Millions lottery drawing.
That means the jackpot for Friday’s drawing is now at least $868 million or a cash lump sum of $494.5 million. It will be the largest jackpot in the game’s history and the second largest in the U.S. lottery jackpot history.
The Mega Millions jackpot beat its own record once again after no ticket matched all the six numbers in the drawing Tuesday night. The winning numbers on Tuesday were 69, 45, 61, 3, 49, and the Mega Ball was 9.
The Mega Millions jackpot had climbed to an estimated $667 million Tuesday morning, making it the largest grand prize in the game’s history hours before the next drawing, according to its website.
It smashed the previous record, a $656 million jackpot that was split three ways in 2012.
Even before it rose, the Mega Millions jackpot – at a whopping $654 million when the day began – was still among the largest lottery prizes in U.S. history.
“It’s so exciting for our players, and all of us, to see the Mega Millions jackpot getting so close to an all-time record level,” Gordon Medenica, the lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium, stated in a news release on Saturday.
He anticipated the possibility that the grand prize would increase again before the next drawing.
No one has won the Mega Millions jackpot since July 24, when a San Jose office pool of 11-co-workers matched all six numbers to split a $543 million prize.
Mega Millions isn’t the only large lottery prize up for grabs this week; the Powerball jackpot grew to a cool $345 million, meaning the two prizes together total more than $1 billion.
Still, even the combined total wouldn’t break the record U.S. lottery prize. That distinction goes to the $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot in 2016 that was shared by three winners.
The Mega Millions drawing takes place at 8 p.m. Friday, while Powerball’s draw is slated for 8 p.m. Wednesday.
