Mass. State Lottery Makes Change, Fans Won’t Be Happy

The price of a Mega Millions ticket is going up starting next month. Starting in April, one play of Mega Millions will cost you $5.00. This is more than double what the current cost of a ticket is now, $2.00.

Mega Millions started in 1996 as "The Big Game" and was offered in just six states including Massachusetts. Now the popular lottery game is played in 45 states. The price increased from $1.00 to $2.00 a ticket in 2017.

The price goes up which will make fans unhappy, but...

What changes now that a Mega Millions ticket is $5.00? Improved odds to win the jackpot

• Improved odds to win the jackpot
• Bigger jackpots more frequently
• Larger starting jackpots
• Faster growing jackpots
• A built-in multiplier on every play, automatically improving every non-jackpot win by 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X or 10X – up to $10 million for matching the five white balls
• No breakeven prizes, meaning when a player wins, they’ll always win more than the cost of the ticket

 $5 per play. This is only the game’s second price adjustment since the first ticket was sold more than 20 years ago and the first change since the current game matrix was adopted in 2017. Sales of the game have generated over $1 billion for Massachusetts cities and towns since 2002. -masslottery.com

I always wondered how many tickets were purchased on the day of the jackpot. The Massachusetts State lottery says that 70% of the tickets to Mega Millions are purchased that day, so it can be tough to predict jackpot amounts.

The biggest Mega Millions jackpot ever won was $1.6B in August of 2023 by a single winner in the state of Florida.

In Massachusetts you cannot remain anonymous if you win the lottery.

The highest jackpot in Mass. history

The highest prize ever won in Massachusetts is $758.7 million, which was won in Chicopee by Mavis Wanczyk through the game “Powerball” in 2017. It is the largest jackpot prize won on a single ticket in U.S. lottery history. -masslive.com

The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are 1 in 302,000,000.