Mega Millions Jackpot Grows To $965M For Friday?s Drawing: What To Know In MD

The jackpot for Friday?s Mega Millions drawing has grown to $965 million, the eighth-highest in the game?s history, and is fueling ticket sales among lottery players across Maryland.

The massive jackpot, which has a cash value of $445.3 million, grew after no one matched all six numbers in Tuesday?s drawing: the white balls 10, 13, 40, 42 and 46, plus the gold Mega Ball 1.

To play the lottery game in Maryland, players must be 18 years or older. Tickets can be purchased at any lottery retailer or created online on the Maryland Lottery?s mobile app.

Mega Millions drawings are held twice a week on Tuesday and Friday nights at 11 p.m. ET.

Tickets are $5 each, with a built-in multiplier feature added in April that automatically increases non-jackpot prizes by 2, 3, 4, 5, or 10 times. Previously, the base ticket was $2, and the multiplier was an optional $1 add-on in most states.

The rule changes were designed to produce larger, faster-growing jackpots and more non-jackpot prizes The changes slightly improved the odds of winning the jackpot, from 1 in 302,575,350 to 1 in 290,472,336, achieved by decreasing the gold Mega Ball pool from 25 to 24 numbers.

The odds of winning any prize also improved, from 1 in 24 to 1 in 23.

Friday?s drawing is the 40th since the jackpot was last won in Virginia on June 27. It?s the longest streak without a jackpot winner since the game began in 2002, and the previous record of 37 drawings was set in January 2021, when a $1.050 billion jackpot was won in Michigan.

Mega Millions said there were 809,030 winning tickets across all prize tiers in Tuesday's drawing, with nationwide winnings totaling more than $27.9 million. Three tickets matched the five white balls to win the game?s second-tier prize. One ticket sold in Arizona had the 5X multiplier for a $5 million prize; the other two, sold in Iowa and New York, had the 3X multiplier for a $3 million prize.

In this jackpot run to date, close to $316 million in prizes have been awarded across nearly 13.2 million winning tickets at all prize levels. They include 20 second-tier prizes of up to $5 million.