Lucky Ticket Sold In New Jersey Hits $1.13 Billion Mega Millions Jackpot, 8th Biggest In U.S. History

A cold streak of 30 straight Mega Millions drawings without a grand prize winner ended Tuesday night. And one very lucky lottery player who purchased a ticket in New Jersey is the beneficiary of that lengthy gap between jackpots.

With a perfect six-for-six match on the numbers of 7, 11, 22, 29, 38, and the gold Mega Ball 4, the winner will claim an estimated $1.13 billion prize ($537.5 million if taken as a lump-sum cash payment), the fifth largest in the history of Mega Millions and good for eighth place on the all-time U.S. lottery jackpot list.

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

So who’s the winner?

As of Wednesday morning, Mega Millions officials had not yet said where exactly in the Garden State the winning ticket was sold, much less who it was sold to.

The location will be revealed before long — and the outlet that sold the ticket will be handsomely rewarded, to the tune of seven figures. But it’s up to the winner whether to ultimately reveal their identity. In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law in 2021 a bill permitting lottery winners to remain anonymous.

Such laws regarding anonymity vary from state to state.

The Mega Millions jackpot was last hit before this on Dec. 8, 2023, when two winning tickets, both sold in California, split the $394 million top prize. When the jackpot crossed the billion-dollar mark last weekend, it marked the first time that had happened in Mega Millions since the all-time Mega Millions record of $1.602 billion was claimed last August.

Powerball’s jackpot has topped that Mega Millions record twice, including the all-time U.S. record of $2.04 billion set in November 2022.

Spreading the big bucks around

Not only was the grand prize hit on Tuesday night, but with relatively commonly chosen “lucky” numbers like 7 and 11 popping up, a whopping 13 tickets matched all five white balls to claim Mega Millions’ second-tier prize. Twelve of those won $1 million, while the 13th, sold in New York, played the Megaplier for an extra dollar and snagged a $2 million payout.

There are also plenty of players out there with mixed emotions about scoring smaller wins:

And then there are those who hit only the gold Mega Ball and got their money back:

For the next Mega Millions drawing, on Friday, the jackpot resets to $20 million ($9.5 million cash).

But there’s a much larger prize to be claimed in Powerball. For Wednesday night’s drawing, the jackpot sits at an estimated $865 million (cash value: $416.1 million).