Sad News: If You Win Powerball, You Can’t Buy Everyone A Hamburger

We write this on the day before one of the holiest days on the American secular calendar.

May 28 is National Hamburger Day, and we here at Lottery Geeks will be celebrating. Might even take the day off.

Ah, yes, the heavenly hamburger, named after the town in Germany called Hamburg.

But that’s about all we can pin down. Truth is, there is no 100% for-sure origin story for this delectable dish, though we can say with some certainty it wasn’t until the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis that its popularity soared.

We also know this: Americans eat about 50 billion hamburgers per year. (That’s all Americans, not each American. Just to be clear.)

Fifty billion. You have to figure they range in price from a buck at McDonald’s to some fancy wagyu shizz, with cooking one in your backyard in between at $3. So, what’s a good guess on the average burger cost? With the price of beef at record highs and factoring in the toppings, let’s say $7. So we spend $350 billion, give or take a few billion, on burgers each year.

We didn’t forget this is a lottery news site, so if you win Powerball Wednesday and its estimated $189 million jackpot, you can’t even come close to buying everyone a burger with the winnings. At $7 a pop, you can buy 27 million people a burger. But taxes, right? So the cash payout for Powerball — $83.1 million — gets you a little less than 12 million burgers.

Basically, you can buy everyone in Oregon three burgers and you’re broke.

Speaking of Oregon, someone is ordering the wagyu. A lucky ticket buyer there hit all five white balls playing Powerball on Saturday night, and they bought the multiplier, which came in at 2x. That’s a $2 million haul.

Those white balls — 13, 47, 52, 64, 67 — were matched with a red Powerball of 25.

Lottery Geeks estimates 7.2 million tickets were sold for Saturday’s drawing.

Mega Millions getting larger

Plenty of burgers are up for grabs Tuesday night, as the Mega Millions jackpot has climbed to $173 million after nobody won Friday night’s drawing. 

The winning numbers for Friday night were 7, 18, 40, 55, 68 with a gold Mega Ball of 18. Nobody matched all five white balls.

Lottery Geeks estimates 5 million tickets were sold for Friday’s drawing.

Tickets for Mega Millions cost $5, while Powerball tickets cost $2, with most states offering the multiplier option for Powerball — which impacts any prize won except the jackpot — for an additional $1. Mega Millions comes with an automatic multiplier for any prize except the jackpot.

Both Powerball and Mega Millions are legal in all states except Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, and Utah. Tickets for both draw games are also sold in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In Puerto Rico, customers can buy tickets for Powerball, but not for Mega Millions.

All-time biggest jackpots

Here is a list of the all-time top 10 U.S. lottery jackpots:

1. $2.04 billion, Powerball, Nov. 7, 2022, won in California
2. $1.76 billion, Powerball, Oct. 11, 2023, won in California
3. $1.6 billion, Mega Millions, Aug. 8, 2023, won in Florida
4. $1.59 billion, Powerball, Jan. 13, 2016, won in California, Florida, and Tennessee
5. $1.54 billion, Mega Millions, Oct. 23, 2018, won in South Carolina
6. $1.35 billion, Mega Millions, Jan. 13, 2023, won in Maine
7. $1.34 billion, Mega Millions, July 29, 2022, won in Illinois
8. $1.33 billion, Powerball, April 6, 2024, won in Oregon
9. $1.22 billion, Mega Millions, Dec. 27, 2024, won in California
10. $1.13 billion, Mega Millions, March 26, 2024, won in New Jersey

And here’s the all-time top 10 by lump-sum cash value:

1. $997.6 million, Powerball, Nov. 7, 2022, won in California
2. $983.5 million, Powerball, Jan. 13, 2016, won in California, Florida, and Tennessee
3. $877.8 million, Mega Millions, Oct. 23, 2018, won in South Carolina
4. $794.2 million, Mega Millions, Aug. 8, 2023, won in Florida
5. $780.5 million, Mega Millions, July 29, 2022, won in Illinois
6. $776.6 million, Mega Millions, Jan. 22, 2021, won in Michigan
7. $774.1 million, Powerball, Oct. 11, 2023, won in California
8. $723.5 million, Mega Millions, Jan. 13, 2023, won in Maine
9. $621 million, Powerball, April 6, 2024, won in Oregon
10. $571.9 million, Mega Millions, Dec. 27, 2024, won in California