- The Powerball jackpot has surpassed the billion dollar mark for the second time this year.
- Recent record prizes are thanks to increasing lottery awareness and an additional drawing day.
The Powerball jackpot has surpassed the billion mark for the second time this year with a near-record $1.2 billion prize up for grabs in Wednesday night's drawing.
The current pot represents the third-largest prize in Powerball history and the seventh-largest in US lottery history. It comes amid a recent wave of historic and increasingly large lottery prizes that have captured the nation's attention and spare change.
In November 2022, a California winner scored the biggest lottery prize in history with a $2.04 billion Powerball ticket. Another California winner scored $1.08 billion in Powerball winnings in January of this year while the Mega Millions jackpot reached $1.58 billion in August.
There's a reason the recent prizes just keep climbing, according to Akshay Khanna, CEO and co-founder of Jackpot.com, an online gambling startup that allows people to purchase lottery tickets on its website and app.
"As the jackpot for both Powerball and Mega Millions steamrolls toward six, seven, eight-hundred-million dollars, it enters the public conscience in a different way, and that really drives people to purchase more and more and more," Khanna told Insider.
That's right — the reason these prizes keep skyrocketing is because people like you and me keep buying tickets and betting on our chances to win big.
Even though the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292 million, Americans continue to throw their money at the game. The US spent more than $100 billion on lottery tickets and games in 2021, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries.
Behavioral experts told Insider in 2019 that humans are more inclined to bet on a good risk than prepare for a bad one, adding that it's difficult to conceptualize how small our chances of winning really are, which makes it easier for us to throw our hat in the ring regardless of what common sense tells us.
As the jackpots get bigger and bigger, more media outlets begin to cover the drawings, as well, Khanna said, which increases awareness of the prize among the public.
"An increased spread in awareness then drives greater demand for these tickets like you're seeing today," he said.
In addition to increasing excitement surrounding the lottery, there's also a statistical reason why the Powerball jackpots seem to keep breaking the bank in recent years, Khanna said.
In 2021, the Powerball increased the number of drawings from twice a week to three times a week, adding a Monday draw date to the calendar.
The Powerball announcement at the time said the change would likely result in "larger, faster-growing jackpots."
"Increasing the number of draws means more money gets funneled to the prize more frequently because people can purchase tickets more frequently," Khanna said.
But keep in mind: the addition of a third day doesn't change your minuscule chances of winning.