With just over two weeks to go until Christmas, the Mega Millions® jackpot is picking up steam! After no ticket matched all six numbers drawn Friday night – the white balls 8, 19, 53, 61 and 69, plus the gold Mega Ball 19, the jackpot rolls to an estimated $400 million ($216.2 million cash) for the next drawing on Tuesday, December 13.
While the jackpot grows, winners across the country are bringing home a little holiday cash. There were two big second-tier winning tickets in the December 9 drawing, one in California and the other in Pennsylvania. Twenty-three tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the game’s third-tier prize. Six of them included the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an extra $1 purchase), which was 4X on Friday night, and are worth $40,000 each. The other 17 third-tier tickets win $10,000 each.
In total, there were 776,250 winning tickets sold for this drawing at all prize levels. Since the last jackpot was won on October 14, there have been more than 11 million winning tickets at all prize levels, including 28 worth $1 million or more. Those big prizes have been won in 15 different states from coast to coast: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
Mega Millions jackpots of all sizes have been won so far in 2022. There was the jaw-dropping $1.337 billion won in Illinois on July 29, a $502 million prize on October 14 shared by winning tickets in California and Florida, and even a $20 million win in Tennessee on April 15. Other jackpots awarded this year were in California ($426 million on January 28), New York ($128 million on March 8), and Minnesota, which got its very first Mega Millions jackpot win on April 12 with a $110 million prize.
