Sylvie Claire / November 6, 2022
The jackpot of a U.S. lottery scheduled to be drawn on Saturday reached $1.6 billion on Friday, the largest prize ever offered in the world, organizers said.
With no one able to guess the right six numbers in the previous 39 drawings, the jackpot has only grown, and could grow even more.
If no one wins the $1.6 billion up for grabs Saturday, the record for the most consecutive Powerball drawings without a jackpot win will be tied, the company said in a statement.
The amount already surpasses that of the biggest win ever. In 2016, several lucky people won a record $1.586 billion, dubbed the jackpot of the century.
The mouth-watering jackpot is of course the stuff of American dreams, but residents of the five states where this lottery is not allowed, including Hawaii and Alaska, can only watch it from afar - or accept the drive.
The odds of winning this amount are only one in 292.2 million anyway. For comparison, the chance of being struck by lightning is one in a million, according to data from U.S. health authorities.
The jackpot represents what the lucky winner would get if he or she agreed to spread the payment over 30 installments, over 29 years.
If the winner chooses to receive the prize all at once, he or she will still have something to look forward to: $782.4 million.
Whatever the winner chooses, a portion of the winnings will of course be withheld by taxes.