Ticket sold in Arkansas wins $1.8B Powerball jackpot in Christmas Eve drawing - 2nd biggest lottery jackpot ever

[ad_1] A Powerball participant in Arkansas is getting an unforgettable reward for the vacations -- a ticket offered there matched all six numbers to win a $1.817 billion jackpot -- the second greatest U.S. lottery prize ever, in keeping with Powerball.

The successful numbers picked in Wednesday's Christmas Eve drawing had been: 4, 25, 31, 52 and 59 with Powerball 19.

The winner has the selection between a lump sum money cost of $834.9 million or an annuitized prize paid out over about 30 years of the total prize quantity. Each choices are earlier than taxes.

The Christmas Eve jackpot was the sport's second billion-dollar-plus prize this yr after 46 consecutive attracts and not using a winner.

A $1.787 billion Powerball jackpot that was received in September by two tickets in Missouri and Texas was the third-largest prize in U.S. lottery historical past.

On this July 18, 2023, file picture, Powerball play slips are displayed in a comfort retailer in Los Angeles.

Mario Tama/Getty Pictures, FILE

The percentages of successful the Powerball jackpot are 1 in over 292 million, in keeping with Powerball.

Clients wait in line to buy lottery tickets on Dec. 1, 2025, in Hawthorne, Calif.

Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Occasions through Getty Pictures

Tim Chartier, a professor of arithmetic and laptop science at Davidson Faculty, likened attempting to win the Powerball jackpot with these odds to choosing a particular second over a nine-year span, after which trying to guess that particular second. He informed ABC Information that purchasing extra tickets does improve a participant's odds of successful – however solely marginally.

"If you happen to purchase 100 tickets, it is true that you simply truly multiply your likelihood of successful by 100," Chartier mentioned, but additionally famous that "shopping for 100 tickets is like having simply 100 guesses to guess that one second in a nine-year span, so it is nonetheless not terribly probably."