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US Mega Millions

Complete Odds
and
Return to Players

           

The purpose of this page is to provide Mega Millions players with the supplemental information that is not readily available on the sponsored lottery site.

Mega Millions
Highlights
Jumbo 2.51% 97.49% 39.89 $0.25 $0.0057 $9.98
Class Winners Losers Overall Odds Overall Return Return Sensitivity Payout per $

We believe this is important because most lotteries only provide players with minimal amount of information: the odds of each winning combination occuring; the overall probability of having a winning ticket; the price of each ticket; the game format; the total number of combinations; and a few other items.

However, this page fills in the missing blanks. Included here are the complete odds and probibilities of every winning and losing occurring. It provides you with a comparison of winners to losers, the monies collected, the monies distributed back to players, and more.

Lottery Power Picks has taken every effort to ensure that this summary information is correct by reading and bookmarking all informtion provided by the organizing lottery body. But, in certain instances, clearly defined rules are not written. In those instances, we made assumptions that are linguistically consistant with the rules. Should any information be incorrect, please inform us so that we may correct it. We hope you find this information useful in understanding the lottery you play.


About Mega Millions a US Multi-State lottery that is played in 12 states. As part of the membership, all duties are shared by the member states. This operating model is different than most other multi-state or multi-country lotteries.

Format Mega Millions requires a player to make 2 choices: (1) Pick 5 numbers out of a set of 56 white balls; and (2) Pick 1 Megaball from a set of 46 balls. If the player picks the same numbers as those that are drawn in the next drawing, the player wins the Jackpot prize. Smaller prizes are awarded for other combinations.

Class Mega Millions is a Jumbo Lottery. We classify it as such because its Jackpot Parity is approximately $143 million, which is over $100 million

Prizes The minimum Mega Millions jackpot prize is a $12,000,000, which may be paid as either a annuity or as a discounted cash value. All other cash prizes are predefined as well and are summarized in the table below. If no one wins the jackpot amount, a portion of the proceeds is rolled forward to the next drawing, allowing the jackpot to grow. All other prizes are established as a fixed amount, and do not vary.

Combinations In the Mega Millions, there are a total of 175,711,536 combinations.

Winners Of these, there are 4,405,086 winning combinations. This represents 2.51% of the combinations. The overall odds of having a winning combination is 39.89 to 1 (the lower the better).

Losers There are 171,306,450 losing Mega Millions combinations. This is 97.49% of the combinations. The overall odds of having a losing combination is 1.03 to 1 (the higher the better; because as this number gets closer to 1, nearly every ticket is a loser.

Price Each Mega Millions ticket costs $1.0

Money Raised Assuming all tickets are sold and there are no duplicates, a total of $175,711,536 will be raised.

Table MM-4: Mega Millions Lottery Summary
Format 5/56+1/46
Class Jumbo
Min Jackpot $12M
Jackpot Type Annuity
Combos 175,711,536
Total Winners 4,405,086
Total Losers 171,306,450
Overall Winners 39.89
Overall Losers 1.03
Pct Winners 2.51%
Pct Losers 97.49%
Price $1.00
Amount Raised $175,711,536
Tot Payout $43,979,120
Avg Ticket Payout $9.98
Normalized Payout/$ $9.98
ReturnOn$ $0.25
Jackpot/Odds $300,840
Return Sensitivity $0.0057
Jackpot Parity $143,732,416


Prize Pool Of this, $43,979,120 will be allocated to the prize pool to be paid back to the players when the jackpot is set to $12.0 million.

Average Winning Ticket Payout On the average, each winning ticket will pay $9.98 to the players. Since a ticket costs $1, the normalized payout per $ spent is also $9.98

Income Returned to Players Based on this information, $0.25 of each $ raised will be returned to the players.

Return Sensitivity If the Mega Millions Jackpot changes by $1.0 million, the above Income Returned to Players will change by $0.0057 (up or down).

Parity In order for Mega Millions to return $1.00 of each dollar raised, the Jackpot must be equal to $143,732,416.00

       

The following Table summarizes the odds, occurances, probability, number of winning combinations,
percent of prize pool, prize payout per combination, and the total cash payout of the combination pool.
Table MM-5: US Mega Millions Expanded Odds Calculations
TotMBOddsOccurProbabilityWinnersPrize%PrizePoolPrize$Payout
51175,711,536.0010.000001%16.83%12,000,00012,000,00012,000,000
53,904,700.80450.000026%456.40%11,250,000250,00011,250,000
41689,064.852550.000145%2551.45%2,550,00010,0002,550,000
415,312.5511,4750.006531%11,4750.98%1,721,2501501,721,250
3113,781.3012,7500.007256%12,7501.09%1,912,5001501,912,500
3306.25573,7500.326530%573,7502.29%4,016,25074,016,250
21843.75208,2500.118518%208,2501.19%2,082,500102,082,500
218.759,371,2505.333315%
11140.631,249,5000.711109%1,249,5002.13%3,748,50033,748,500
13.1356,227,50031.999891%
0174.802,349,0601.336884%2,349,0602.67%4,698,12024,698,120
01.66105,707,70060.159795%
Sum175,711,536100.000000%4,405,08625.03%43,979,120

References
You can learn more about the Mega Millions and verify our findings by visiting our references.