Three Tickets Scoop $564.1 Million Powerball Jackpot
Thursday February 12th 2015Ticket holders from Texas, North Carolina and Puerto Rico have shared a $564.1 million Powerball jackpot - the third largest in the history of the interstate lottery game. The winning Texas ticket was sold at a convenience store in Princeton, Collins County, and the Puerto Rican winner is the first ticket holder in the territory to snap up the grand prize, as the U.S. territory only joined Powerball in late September of last year.
The rush to buy entries kicked off in earnest over last weekend, when the rollover jackpot was estimated to be worth $450 million after last Saturday’s draw. Ticket sales pushed the projected value of the top prize ever higher; on Tuesday, the jackpot increased to $485 million, and rose to $500 million by mid-day on Wednesday. By 11pm local time yesterday, the total estimated value of the top prize was a whopping $564.1 million.
According to Terry Rich, spokesperson for Powerball and Director of the Iowa Lottery, 125 million tickets were purchased on the day of the draw - in addition to all of the tickets sold in the days leading up to Wednesday night’s massive event. State lotteries reported that ticket sales were averaging in the thousands per minute across many retail locations.
The winning Powerball numbers were 11, 13, 25, 39 and 54 with Powerball 19 and Power Play 3. An astonishing 33 ticket holders matched five main numbers to win $1 million each, while a single participant who matched the Power Play number as well as five main numbers picked up $2 million.
Over 5.9 million participants grabbed cash prizes - if you took part in last night’s game and want to find out how you did, visit the Powerball Results page to find out more about the prize breakdowns!
If all three players choose the annuity option, they will receive $188 million each before taxes, with 30 payments made over 29 years. If they opt for the cash sum, they will grab $127 million before taxes.
The Powerball top prize has now reset to the minimum value of $40 million (cash option $27 million) for the draw on Saturday 14th February. No other information has been released about the owners of last night’s winning tickets, but keep up with Lottery.net, as details about these lucky players will be published as soon as they are made available!