Mega Millions set for first drawing with new $5 ticket
The Mega Millions lottery will have its first drawing Tuesday night since game officials rolled out a new $5 price tag for each ticket.
The game group first announced the new ticket price in October as part of a series of tweaks that it said will improve the odds of a jackpot — although the odds remain extremely long.
The new odds of a jackpot win are 1 in 290,472,336, compared with 1 in 302,575,350, the group said in news release about the changes on March 25.
The improved odds for a jackpot and a win of any prize are because of the removal of one gold Mega Ball from the mix — from 25 Mega Balls to 24 — the game group said.
Before the price increase, tickets had cost $2 each.
“Beyond big jackpots, players told us they want bigger non-jackpot prizes and that’s exactly what this new game delivers,” Joshua Johnston, lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a statement last month.
There have been changes to the Mega Millions before, most recently in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In October 2017, the game doubled the price of tickets from $1 to $2 and increased starting jackpots from $15 million to $40 million, which was designed to swell jackpots.
Then in 2020, because of slowing sales during the pandemic, the game was changed again, dropping the starting jackpot from $40 million to $20 million and eliminating a minimum jackpot increase. The increase instead was tied to ticket sales, which is how it still grows.
The new game scheme raises the starting jackpot to $50 million.
Tuesday’s drawing, the first with the new $5 tickets, is scheduled for 11 p.m. ET. The estimated jackpot is $54 million.
CORRECTION: (April 8, 9:15 p.m. ET) A previous version of this article misstated when the new ticket price was announced. It was in October, not March.
