A lucky ticket buyer in Oregon has won a $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot, the eighth largest lottery prize in US history.
Should the winner who meets all six numbers forego the rarely claimed option of a 30-year payout, the pre-tax lump sum would be $621 million. Federal and state taxes would cut revenue significantly, but what’s left will be more than enough to brighten anyone’s day.
Here’s what we know about the win so far:
The winner has not yet been announced or has not yet reported.
While the lucky buyer may have purchased the winning ticket while passing through, it was sold in a northeast Portland zip code dotted with modest homes, the city’s main airport and a golf course.
Lottery winners often choose to remain anonymous if allowed, which allows them to avoid requests for cash from friends, strangers and creditors.
Oregon has no such law, but gives winners one year to come forward. The state has had five Powerball jackpot winners over the years, including two families who shared a $340 million prize in 2005.
Lottery winner anonymity laws vary widely from state to state. In California, the lottery last month announced the name of one of the winners of the second-largest Powerball jackpot — a $1.8 billion prize drawn last fall.
The odds of winning a Powerball drawing are 1 in 292 million, and no one had won one since January 1. The 41 consecutive draws without a winner through Sunday tied the game’s two longest droughts ever, which occurred in 2021 and 2022, according to the lottery.
The draw was supposed to take place on Saturday, but due to technical problems it could not happen until early Sunday morning. Powerball required more time for one jurisdiction to conduct a pre-draw computer verification of each ticket sold.
The odds of winning are so small that it’s far more likely for someone to be struck by lightning at some point than for them to win a Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot, even if you’ve played every drawing of both for 80 years. But with so many people betting money for a chance at life-changing wealth, someone just did it again.
It is the eighth largest lottery jackpot in US history and the fourth largest Powerball win; the other four were Mega Millions prizes. The biggest jackpot win was a $2 billion Powerball prize sold to a man who bought the ticket in California in 2022.
Every state except Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah, plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands participate in the two lotteries, which are administered by the Multi-State Lottery Association.
How much is 1.3 billion dollars?
If the winner were to take home the entire jackpot at once and not have to pay taxes, this would still be nowhere near the $227 billion net worth of the world’s richest person, Elon Musk. But it would still put the winner in the very exclusive club of the less than 800 billionaires in the US
It would also be larger than the gross domestic product of the Caribbean countries Dominica, Grenada and St. Kitts and Nevis. And it would be enough to buy certain professional hockey teams and generate more than what Taylor Swift earned on her recent record-breaking tour.
They are as inevitable as not winning the Powerball jackpot.
Even after taxes – 24% federal and 8% Oregon – the winner’s lump sum would be well over $400 million, or the minimum cost of rebuilding the recently destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.
For someone it is a bridge to a new life.