Christmas Eve jackpot hits $1 billion in largest ever December Mega Millions prize
One lucky lotto player could wake up to a billion-dollar Christmas morning this year.
The Mega Millions jackpot hit an estimated $1 billion on Tuesday ahead of the Christmas Eve drawing, according to the Mega Millions website.
If someone does score a six-number winning ticket on Tuesday, the jackpot would be the largest prize ever won in December and the seventh-largest in the game’s history.
Choosing the lump sum cash option would cut the prize money in half to about $448.8 million, according to the Mega Millions website. Winners can also choose annual payments over time. Mega Millions winnings are subject to state and federal income taxes.
Nobody has won the jackpot since September, when a Texan nabbed $810 million. The pot has continued to climb in the previous 29 drawings.
Several of the largest-ever lotto jackpots have happened in recent years.
A California man won a whopping $2.04 billion Powerball — the largest-ever lotto prize — in 2022. Earlier this year, a different California man claimed a $1.7 billion Powerball prize.
The largest Mega Millions prize, meanwhile, went to a Florida winner last year who won a $1.6 billion jackpot.
The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are about one in 302,575,350, according to the Lotto website.
If someone wins on Tuesday, they wouldn’t be the first Christmas Eve Mega Millions winner. A $68 million jackpot was won in 2022, but nobody ever claimed the prize, ABC News reported.
