Who wants to be a billionaire? US lottery offers record $2.1 billion jackpot

Who wants to be a billionaire? US lottery offers record $2.1 billion jackpot

New York - Shops did a roaring trade in frenzied last-minute ticket sales in the final countdown to Wednesday's US draw for a US$1.5 billion (S$2.1 billion) jackpot, a world record in the lottery industry.

Ticket sales for the Powerball draw topped more than $609 million nationwide and generated more than $1 million an hour in Texas alone in the final build-up to the 10:59 pm (0359 GMT Thursday) draw, the lottery said.

Office workers dashed out between meetings to buy tickets, fantasizing about what they would do with the winnings, and commuters joked about scooping the jackpot to save them from the deep freeze of winter.

For days, the talk of the nation, from coast to coast, and even from Canada to Mexico, is: will someone finally win the first Powerball in two months and, if you were to win, how would you spend such a whopping jackpot?

"I'm not a regular, but why not? Like the commercial says, 'Hey, you never know,'" said Nick Friedberg, a carpenter and father of two drinking coffee on a bitterly cold Manhattan street.

"Non-stop, everyone's talking about it," he said, running through a list of things he would like to buy. "Do the world, that's for sure.

"I'd love to go to Europe, never been. There are a lot of stuff over there I'd like to see, Italy and all that history. I like all that stuff," he told AFP.

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The odds of winning are one in 292 million. The winner can choose to be paid the full jackpot in annual installments for 29 years or take US$929.9 million as a one-off payment.

The Multi-State Lottery Association says if there are no winners on Wednesday, the jackpot will roll over to US$2 billion on Saturday with a lump sum payout of US$1.24 billion.

"I don't play regularly but when it's this large, the odds are slim to none, but you know you aren't going to win if you don't play," said Jeremy Scott, a lobbyist in Washington.

To win the jackpot, a ticket holder has to match all numbers on six balls selected -- five white ones from a drum containing 69 balls, and a red one pulled from a drum with 26.

"The winner is going to be somebody in the country, from a place we've never heard of," said J. Jay Backus, a New York bus driver. He told AFP he once won $5,000 playing a different lottery game.

"The ones who win are always the elderly or the rich people," he said.

See also: 10 things to know about the Powerball Jackpot

Lottery executives say ticket sales have reached record levels.

Wednesday's jackpot started at US$40 million on November 7 and is the result of 20 drawings with no overall winner.

"Sales are doing exponentially more than we've ever done before," Gary Grief, chair of the Powerball game group, told AFP on Tuesday.

"I'm hearing anecdotally and through news outlets, millions of people who have never played Powerball before are indeed purchasing a ticket."

Some retailers scoring the biggest sales are in US states bordering the handful that do not participate in the game, he said.

"People are flocking over from those states to stand in line and buy lottery tickets," Grief said.

"You do not have to be a citizen of the US -- people are coming from Mexico and Canada to purchase tickets."

But Grief sounded a note of caution.

"We want people to play responsibly. This is not a game to put your life savings on, your retirement on. A big part of the fun is putting down your $2 and then dreaming."

The lottery anticipates that 85 per cent of all possible combinations will be wagered on so there is an 85 per cent likelihood of a jackpot winner on Wednesday night.

The previous US jackpot record of $656 million, on March 30, 2012, was scooped up by three winners from North Carolina, Puerto Rico and Texas.

The world's richest lottery is Spain's annual Christmas "El Gordo," which in 2015 handed out 2.2 billion euros (US$2.4 billion) but which capped individual wins at 400,000 euros and handed out thousands of smaller prizes.

See also:  Many lottery winners end up in hospital

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