Powerball Jackpot Balloons to Estimated $550M for Saturday Drawing

Posted on: October 20, 2022, 01:19h. 

Last updated on: October 20, 2022, 02:09h.

Devin O'Connor @CasinoorgDevinO Read More
Expertise: Asia Pacific Gaming, Commercial Gaming, Legislation, Politics.

The Powerball jackpot for this Saturday’s drawing is an estimated $550 million, which nearly makes it one of the lottery game’s 10 largest all-time prizes.

Powerball jackpot lottery odds
A Powerball player in Florida shows off their ticket slips. The Powerball jackpot for Oct. 22, 2022, is an estimated $550 million. (Image: Getty)

No ticket matched Wednesday night’s winning numbers. The five white balls were 6, 8, 15, 27, 42, and the red Powerball was 10. Wednesday’s draw marked the 33rd consecutive Powerball drawing without a jackpot winner. The odds of matching all six numbers are a miserable one in 292.2 million.

Play is significantly increasing because of the ever-growing jackpot. Powerball officials estimated that Wednesday night’s jackpot would be $508 million. But strong sales pushed the prize to $515.5 million.

At an estimated $550 million, the Saturday, Oct. 22 Powerball jackpot would be just $14.1 million short of the game’s 10th-richest jackpot of $564.1 million, won in February 2015. If there’s no jackpot winner on Saturday, the current Powerball jackpot will almost certainly venture onto the game’s top-10 largest jackpot list for the Monday, October 24 draw.

Saturday’s $550 million Powerball jackpot has a cash option of $277.5 million. After federal tax, the one-time lump sum payment would be about $174.8 million before any state taxes.

Jackpot Increments

Building up a lottery jackpot north of half a billion dollars takes time. For the current Powerball jackpot, the prize began rolling after a winning ticket in Pennsylvania claimed a $206.9 million jackpot following the August 3 drawing.

Powerball jackpot rollovers typically increase the pool by about $7 million to $15 million when the prize is under $100 million. As the jackpot increases, so does interest among players, which results in stronger sales.

After crossing the quarter-of-a-billion-dollar mark last month, Powerball ticket sales jumped significantly. The jackpot swelled more than $25 million after the $300.7 million jackpot went unclaimed on September 28. After the $338.2 million pot didn’t hit on October 3, the prize climbed another $16.2 million in just two days for the October 5 drawing of $354.4 million.

Powerball sales continued to intensify since. The jackpot spiked over $30 million from Monday to Wednesday night’s $515.5 million bounty. The lottery expects the jackpot prize to balloon by $35 million in time for Saturday night’s draw at 10:59 p.m. EST from the Florida Lottery draw studio in Tallahassee.

Wednesday Winners

Though no Powerball players won the jackpot Wednesday night, there were plenty of secondary prize winners. Powerball said approximately 965K tickets won some sort of prize on Wednesday night, with cash winnings totaling more than $12.3 million.

Two tickets matched all five white balls, but not the red Powerball, to win the game’s second-best prize of $1 million. One of those seven-figure tickets purchased the $1 add-on Power Play option to double their prize to $2 million. Though the Power Play was 3x, the $1 million prize can only be doubled through the Power Play multiplier. The odds of matching the five white balls are one in about 11.7 million.

Another 22 tickets matched four white balls and the red Powerball to win $50K each. Of those 22 tickets, just six had the Power Play add-on to triple their wins to $150K.