House Edge In New Xs & Os Game Daunting — But It’s All Relative
As with all progressive draw games, the EV improves as the jackpot builds
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Tickets for the first drawing in Powerball’s new NFL-themed Xs & Os game are now officially on sale, with the debut draw scheduled for Sunday at 10 p.m. ET.
It may offer a fun sweat for lottery players. It may offer an exciting way to turn $5 into a few days of hoping and dreaming. What it will not offer — at least not initially — is positive expected value (+EV).
Lottery media outlet Lottery USA crunched some numbers last week and determined that at the opening estimated jackpot value of $1 million, players should expect to lose, on average, $3.34 of every $5 spent. Phrased another way, the game has a house edge of 64.93%.
Of course, every drawing that does not result in someone winning the jackpot causes that grand prize to roll over and grow, so the EV will get better as the football season marches along and other players don’t find the end zone.
Still, a house edge of almost 65%? The house edge in casino blackjack is typically under 1% (depending on the rules), it’s 1.4% in craps, it’s 5.26% in double-zero roulette, and it varies from about 2% to 15% on slot machines.
Compared to any of those games, Powerball Xs & Os looks like a lousy investment. Even compared to lottery scratch-offs, it’s fairly brutal, as an analysis in July found about a 31% house edge on those.
But as major national draw games go, Xs & Os actually isn’t bad at all. Lottery Geeks asked its friendly AI consultants to crunch some numbers for us, and we found that at the minimum $50 million jackpot amount, Mega Millions’ house edge is 74%. At Powerball’s minimum $20 million jackpot, that game’s house edge is a staggering 80.6%.
Specific prize tiers and odds
In Powerball Xs & Os, players select (or have automatically selected for them) eight of the 32 NFL teams. According to the official odds chart, if a player matches four of eight teams (a 1-in-14.14 chance), their $5 turns into $7. Matching five of eight (1-in-92.8) returns $40. Match six of eight (1-in-1,361.06), get paid $500. And match seven of eight (1-in-54,782.81) and you cash $20,000.
A perfect eight for eight, which has a 1-in-10,518,300 probability of happening, pays the grand prize, and that’s where the EV can change significantly. Turning $5 into $1 million is a mere 200,000-to-1 payout (and that’s without addressing the reality that the payment is an annuity and that a winner would have to pay taxes on it). But if the jackpot gets to $20 million, the equation looks a lot better. If it hits $50 million, you’re somewhere in the vicinity of getting your money’s worth.
And it is worth noting that there are additional perks possible when playing Powerball Xs & Os, as customers can enter their tickets (before even finding out if they won anything) at PowerballOfficial.com to earn points toward additional prize drawings, possible rewards including a trip to this season’s Super Bowl, NFL Shop gift cards, and more.
As of this week’s first drawing, Powerball Xs & Os tickets are available in Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
