The cost to play Mega Millions goes up after Friday night’s game — and it has nothing to do with tariffs.
Operators of the popular lottery game announced six months ago that beginning in April, the bargain $2 ticket price would rise to $5 each.
In what the operators of the lottery numbers game call a “mega” makeover, a new and improved Mega Millions will launch Tuesday. The “enhancements” include better odds of winning, a $50 million starting jackpot and bigger wins for non-jackpot prizes.
“Players who had won $2 in the old game will now take home $10, $15, $20, $25 or $50 under this game. Those who had won $500 under the old rules will now take home $1,000; $1,500; $2,000; $2,500 or $5,000 in this new game,” according to a Mega Millions news release last month.
In addition, according to the release, there will be no break-even prizes — whenever a player wins, the prize will be at least double the cost of a ticket, with a minimum $10 prize.
Another change is the removal of one gold Mega Ball from the game. With 24 Mega Balls instead of the 25 in the current game, a player’s odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot will improve to 1:290,472,336 from 1:302,575,350, Mega Millions said in the release.
Mega Millions’ hope is that by increasing ticket revenue and rejiggering the odds — now set at 1 in 302.6 million — to something less stratospheric, more people will win jackpots even as prizes grow extraordinarily high, which attracts more players. The goal is to increase revenue and provide more money to state lotteries.
Mega Millions said the ticket price increase is only the second hike in more than two decades since the first ticket was sold. It is the first change in the new game matrix that was adopted in 2017.
Mega Millions has seen six winners of jackpots estimated at more than $1 billion, including most recently in December, when a ticket sold in California won a $1.27 billion prize.
Maryland is among the 45 states plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands where Mega Millions is played.
However, there hasn’t been a winning Mega Millions jackpot ticket sold in Maryland in over a decade. A ticket purchased in La Plata, Maryland, shared a $414 million jackpot in March 2014. Before that, there were winners in Anne Arundel County and in Mount Airy in 2013; and a trio of Marylanders — “The Three Amigos” — shared one of three tickets that won a record-breaking Mega Millions jackpot of $656 million in 2012.
The first drawing under the new prize structure will be held Tuesday at 11 p.m.
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