Tonight: Powerball Lottery Draws for $311 Million Jackpot

With no tickets matching all six numbers on Friday night, the Powerball Lottery jackpot has grown to an estimated $311 million. If anyone wins it at the next draw on Wednesday 9th July, they can choose a lump sum payment of around $221 million after taxes, or take it over 29 years to receive the whole amount.

As the $540 million Mega Millions jackpot was claimed on Friday, this is now the biggest prize on Earth.

Playing Mega Millions 

It costs $2 to play the Powerball lottery, and for that players get to pick 6 numbers, with 5 main ones selected from a group of 69 and a sixth red Powerball one chosen from a smaller group of just 26. There are several secondary prize levels, with matching enough of the main numbers earning winners a guaranteed $1 million prize, while just matching the red ball number being worth $1.

For an extra $1 per go, a Power Play option can be taken, and this has the effect of multiplying all prizes, except for the jackpot and the 5 number $1 million prize which gets doubled. A multiplier of between 2x and 5x is drawn.

The odds of winning the jackpot are around 1 in 292.000,000, while the odds of collecting some sort of prize is 1 in 25.

About The $311 million Draw

The Powerball has been rolling over since a single ticket won $429 million back in May, but this is dwarfed by the world-record breaking $1.58 billion prize that was shared by 3 tickets in January of this year. Once jackpots hit this sort of level, public interest increases and they tend to rise even more quickly.

The next draw takes place at 10.59 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday 9th July, although tickets must be purchased by 9.45 p.m. that evening. Anyone playing online via services like The Lotter, Play USA Lotteries or LottoBooking will need to take this into account when entering, as Eastern time is 5 hours behind the UK and 6 hours behind European time.