Powerball enthusiasts now have a golden opportunity to win an enormous $725 million jackpot this weekend, following a Wednesday night drawing that yielded no grand prize winner. The numbers drawn were 16, 27, 59, 62 and 63, with a Powerball number of 23.
The Saturday’s drawing jackpot of $725 million stands as the third-greatest Powerball award this year. It tails a hefty $754.6 million prize won in Washington state in February, and the astounding $1.08 billion jackpot claimed in California during July. Notably, this weekend’s jackpot also finds its place as the eighth-largest reward in the history of the game, a fact confirmed by the lottery on Wednesday.
This weekend’s drawing, should it produce a grand prize winner, gives the lucky individual the option to either take the full jackpot in graduated payments spanning 29 years or opt for a lump sum of an estimated $345.7 million instead.
While the grand prize remained unclaimed after Wednesday night, several players didn’t walk away empty-handed. More than 1 million tickets were proclaimed winners of some prize, with the majority netting $21 or less. Notably, two tickets, originating in Georgia and Texas, bagged a whopping $2 million each. Their win came from matching the first five numbers and activating a “power play” multiplier. An additional Georgia ticket yielded $1 million for matching the first five numbers without invoking the multiplier.
Since the historical $1.08 billion win by a Californian in July, a total of twenty-seven Powerball drawings have been conducted. Interestingly, the mind-boggling billion-dollar July reward was only the third Powerball jackpot to have matched or exceeded the billion-dollar threshold.
