State Lottery Payouts
Written May 20, 2008 by Jack Jones
There are probably more people that play state lottery games than anything else, so let’s take a look at these state lottery payouts. I recently saw a case where the state lottery had a jackpot of nearly $24 million dollars. A nice number for sure, but there were two individuals lucky enough to have all of the numbers and they ended up splitting less than $5 million a piece. Let’s take a look at why this is.
In general, to win the grand prize in a typical Lotto game you buy a dollar ticket, and then correctly match six numbers drawn randomly from, for example, forty-nine numbers. This is called a 6/49 game. The probability of any one ticket winning the jackpot in 6/49 lotto game is one in 13,983,816.
Lottery agencies typically fish out 50 percent of each dollar wagered, some of which covers expenditures, but the rest is turned over to the state for civic-minded programs like education.
So for our example above with the $24 million payout, the state grabs half of that figure right away, leaving the other half for cash prizes, including smaller cash awards for matching fewer than six of the numbers. What you’re left with is roughly $10 million for winning a 14 million to 1 bet. If around 20 million people were playing the game that week, it is probable two people would win, splitting that pot, which in your illustration was $5 million apiece.