Mega Millions Jackpot Jumps to $627 Million for Friday Drawing

August 28, 2024 – The final Mega Millions® jackpot of August will be a big one! After no ticket matched all six numbers drawn Tuesday night – the white balls 16, 18, 21, 54 and 65, plus the gold Mega Ball 5 – the estimated jackpot for Friday, August 30, 2024 is $627 million ($309.1 million cash). It’s only the ninth time the Mega Millions jackpot has surpassed $600 million since the game began in 2002.

While the jackpot remains elusive, the number of winning tickets at all other prize levels keeps increasing – there were a total of 1,202,189 winning tickets for the August 27 drawing. Two tickets, both sold in South Carolina, matched the five white balls to win the game’s second-tier prize. One of those tickets is worth $2 million because it included the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an extra $1 purchase), which was 2X Tuesday night. The other South Carolina second-tier ticket wins the standard $1 million second prize.

Across the country, 30 tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the third-tier prize. Ten of those are worth $20,000 each because they also included the optional Megaplier; the other 20 take home the standard $10,000 each.

The jackpot has been growing since it was last won at $552 million in Illinois on June 4. In the 24 drawings in this jackpot run to date, there have been more than 16.0 million winning tickets across all non-jackpot prize tiers. These include 47 second-tier prizes of $1 million or more, won in 22 different jurisdictions from coast to coast: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Only two Mega Millions jackpots have been won so far this year. Before the Illinois win on June 4, a whopping $1.128 billion was won in New Jersey. That prize is still unclaimed (winners in New Jersey have one year from the drawing date to claim).

Mega Millions is the only lottery game that has produced six jackpots greater than $1 billion. All were won in different states – South Carolina was the first in 2018, followed by Michigan in 2021, Illinois in 2022, Maine in early 2023, Florida last August and New Jersey in March. The Florida prize on August 8, 2023, is the game’s current record jackpot at $1.602 billion.

Tickets are sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets are $2 each; in most jurisdictions, players can add the Megaplier for an additional $1 to multiply their non-jackpot prizes. Half of the proceeds from the sale of each Mega Millions ticket remains in the state where the ticket was sold, where the money supports designated good causes and retailer commissions.

Drawings are conducted at 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesdays and Fridays in Atlanta, Georgia. The overall odds of winning any Mega Millions prize are 1 in 24; the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350.

The top Mega Millions jackpots:

Source: Mega Millions

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