Mega Millions winning numbers are to be revealed soon on tonight's draw, March 18, 2014. The six lucky numbers of the winning ticket will be announced at exactly 11 p.m. EST. Hundreds of millions of players are tuning in tonight for the drawing of the Mega Millions winning numbers, especially now that the jackpot prize has reached a mind-blowing amount: US$400M!
According to Mega Millions lottery officials, the $400 million jackpot prize for Tuesday's drawing is the third highest jackpot in the history of the Mega Millions game, and the sixth largest big-game lottery jackpot in U.S. history.
Today's $400 million jackpot has a lump-sum cash option of $224 million, and it would trail a Mega record $656 million jackpot on March 30, 2012, pointed out in the Mega Millions website.
No one matched the winning numbers in Friday night's drawing, which were 7, 20, 40, 54, 69 with a Mega ball of 12 -- when the jackpot was $353 million.
However, 5 tickets sold Friday matched five numbers but not the Mega ball. Lottery officials said 3 of the 5 tickets played the optional Megaplier for an extra dollar; the three tickets were sold in Arkansas, Florida and Virginia - worth $3 million each.The other two tickets sold in Ohio and Virginia are worth $1 million each.
As the jackpot rises, so are the sales of the tickets, especially when big-game jackpots reach $300 million or more, according to lottery experts.
In order to play a ticket and win the colossal Mega Millions jackpot prize of $400 million on March 18, a player must choose six numbers; five of which are from 1 to 75 while the remaining one is referred to as the Mega Ball and is only chosen from 1 to 15.
If all of the numbers on the ticket of the player are the same digits flashed after the Mega Millions draw, then that player is bringing home the total jackpot prize.
It's harder than it looks however, because lottery officials say that the overall likelihood of winning the Mega Millions jackpot is 1 in 258,890,850, while the odds of winning any prize at all is 1 in 14.7. One can still hope to get second place prize though, which amounts to $1 million.
The Mega Millions winning numbers are drawn every Tuesday and Friday around 10:45 p.m. EST, whilst official results of the day's draw are posted shortly after 11 p.m. EST on the main webpage of the Mega Millions Lottery. Winnings will be delivered in two options in case anybody wins: one-time cash payment or in 30 separate payments.
If no one matches all six Mega Millions winning numbers in today's drawing, the next Mega Millions jackpot will most likely go over the $450 million mark by the time the next drawing rolls around on Friday, March 21.
Mega Millions players can check out today's Mega Millions winning numbers draw through this free live stream link. You can also catch direct results for tonight's Mega Millions draw through this link.
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