BATON ROUGE — The Louisiana Lottery is unveiling a brand new Mega Millions multistate game that includes a larger starting jackpot, slightly lower overall odds of winning, a built-in prize-multiplier feature and no break-even prizes. It begins April 5th.
That ticket will go from being $2/$3 to $5 a ticket. It’s the second Mega Millions price change in the game’s 20 years.
Fast tracking the jackpot size begins with a starting jackpot that will more than double to $50 million, and an average jackpot size will soar to $803 million. The odds of winning the jackpot will improve slightly from 1 in 302.5 million to 1 in 290.5 million.
Along with the jackpot getting bigger, every play will include a multiplier that prints automatically on the ticket. Any winnings for the play are multiplied by that number. This results in larger average nonjackpot prizes, particularly with the inclusion of a new 10x prize multiplier (in addition to 2x, 3x, 4x and 5x). That means up to a $10 million prize is possible for matching all five white-ball numbers.
With the new Mega Millions, there will be no break-even prizes. Regardless of the multiplier, players will win at least double the cost of the play when they win. For example, the prize for matching just the yellow Mega Ball number will range from $10 up to $50 when the new game goes live.
Overall odds of winning a prize will get slightly better, moving from 1 in 24 to 1 in 23, as one yellow Mega Ball number is being removed from the matrix. So players will select 5 of 70 white-ball numbers and 1 of 24 yellow Mega Ball numbers. For that reason, old playslips (both paper and digital on the Lottery’s Official App) will no longer work, and players must complete new ones.
In order to prepare the matrix change, the Lottery temporarily suspend the multidraw option for Mega Millions after the draw break on Jan. 28, 2025. On April 5, the multidraw option returns to Mega Millions, allowing players to purchase tickets for up to 20 future drawings. The first Mega Millions drawing under this new matrix will be Tuesday, April 8.
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