Check your tickets! NJ lottery player wins Mega Millions $1.13 billion jackpot

UPDATE: The Ticket was sold at ShopRite Liquor #781, located at 2200 Route 66, in Neptune Township, according to NJ Lottery officials.

NEW JERSEY – After growing for more than 15 weeks, the Mega Millions® jackpot finally has its first winner of 2024!

A lucky ticket-holder in New Jersey matched all six numbers drawn Tuesday night – the white balls 7, 11, 22, 29 and 38, plus the gold Mega Ball 4 – to take home the estimated prize of $1.13 billion ($537.5 million cash). It was not immediately known where in New Jersey the jackpot-winning ticket was sold.

It is the fifth largest jackpot in the history of the game, although because jackpots are always based on actual sales, the official jackpot amount will be determined after sales from all 47 participating jurisdictions are finalized on Wednesday morning.

“Congratulations to the New Jersey Lottery for selling a jackpot-winning ticket in Tuesday’s $1.13 billion Mega Millions drawing,” said Georgia Lottery President and CEO Gretchen Corbin, lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium. “We celebrate our new jackpot winner, as well as all the prizes won and dollars raised for good causes during this exciting jackpot run.”

In 31 drawings since the Mega Millions jackpot was last won on December 8 with two tickets in California, this jackpot run produced more than 29.9 million winning tickets at all prize levels, ranging from $2 up to $4 million (plus the jackpot). These include 56 second-tier prizes of $1 million or more, won in 22 different jurisdictions from coast to coast: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia

In the March 26 drawing alone, there were a total of 3,693,854 winning tickets, including the single jackpot winner. Thirteen tickets matched the five white balls to win the game’s second-tier prize. One, sold in New York, is worth $2 million, because it included the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an extra $1 purchase), which was 2X Tuesday night. The other 12 second-tier prizes win the standard $1 million each, and were won in California, Colorado, Florida (2), Georgia (2), Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York (2) and Ohio.

Across the country, 171 tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the game’s third-tier prize. Thirty-four are worth $20,000 each because they also included the optional Megaplier; the other 137 third-tier winning tickets are worth $10,000 each.

The New Jersey Lottery, one of the original members of the Mega Millions Consortium when the game was formed in 2002, has now seen 24 Mega Millions jackpot winners over the years, either singly or shared with other states. Prior to Tuesday night’s windfall, the most recent Mega Millions jackpot won in New Jersey was on July 24, 2020.

The jackpot for the next drawing on Friday, March 29, resets to its current starting value of $20 million ($9.5 million cash).

Mega Millions is the only lottery game that has produced six jackpot wins exceeding $1 billion each – all in different states. South Carolina was the first in 2018, followed by Michigan in 2021, Illinois in 2022, Maine in early 2023, Florida last August (the current game record jackpot of $1.602 billion), and New Jersey in March 2024.

Tickets are sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets are $2 each; in most jurisdictions, players can add the Megaplier for an additional $1 to multiply their non-jackpot prizes. Half of the proceeds from the sale of each Mega Millions ticket remains in the state where the ticket was sold, where the money supports designated good causes and retailer commissions.

Drawings are conducted at 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesdays and Fridays in Atlanta, Georgia. The overall odds of winning any Mega Millions prize are 1 in 24; the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350.

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