Mega Millions $1 billion jackpot: Now may statistically be the best time to play

Zack Guzman
·Senior Writer
Updated ·3 min read

Friday night’s Mega Millions drawing has swelled to an estimated $1 billion jackpot, which marks the third-largest lottery haul in history.

But does that mean now is the best time to join others in buying a ticket? Here’s what the math says.

Gamblers and mathematicians look at ‘expected value’

Historical lottery data reveals that buying a lottery ticket when the jackpot is at a record level is not necessarily the smartest move, partly due to an often-overlooked factor: the odds of having to split the jackpot. But what about the third-largest jackpot?

When the jackpot grows to a noteworthy size, ticket sales tend to increase exponentially — a phenomenon well documented by computer scientist Jeremy Elson. As more and more people buy tickets, the probability of seeing the jackpot split among multiple winners also grows. And that can have a huge impact on the overall expected value of any given lottery ticket.

Historical data shows there is an exponential relationship between the dollar amount of advertised jackpots and the amount of tickets sold.
Historical data shows there is an exponential relationship between the dollar amount of advertised jackpots and the amount of tickets sold.

When gamblers and statisticians weigh whether or not a bet is worth the gamble, they look at what’s called expected value. In a simple bet, it’s usually calculated by multiplying the probability of winning a bet by the payout. For example, the expected value of a $1 payout on a heads-up coin flip would be calculated as .50 times $1, or 50 cents.

So a rational gambler would be willing to bet up to 50 cents for a gamble with those parameters. Gambling more than 50 cents would be a losing proposition, over time.

Of course, when it comes to the lottery, the odds of winning are a lot worse than a coin flip. The probability of winning a Powerball jackpot is roughly 1 in 292 million, compared with about 1 in 303 million for Mega Millions. That probability is constant no matter how many tickets are sold, as are the adjustments that need to be made to account for taxes and converting the advertised annuity jackpot to a lump-sum dollar amount.

But the fact that the probability of splitting a jackpot hinges on how many tickets are sold, means that the expected value of a lottery ticket tends to decline as jackpots approach record amounts.

The expected value of a lottery ticket, including non-jackpot prizes, tends to peak with large, but non-record jackpots, according to historical lottery data.
The expected value of a lottery ticket, including non-jackpot prizes, tends to peak with large, but non-record jackpots, according to historical lottery data.

In fact, according to Elson, the expected value for lottery tickets tend to peak when jackpots hit large amounts — just not so large that they become “must-play” events. For Friday’s drawing, assuming 150 million Mega Millions tickets sold, there’s about a 30% chance a single person wins the jackpot, and about an 8% chance we see two or more winners. In the record Mega Millions jackpot in 2018, which saw more than 370 million tickets sold, the odds of two or more winners sat at a much higher 23%.

Assuming 150 million tickets sold, there is a 30% chance Friday's jackpot is claimed by just one winner compared to about an 8% chance we see a split jackpot. The most likely outcome remains no winners.
Assuming 150 million tickets sold, there is a 30% chance Friday's jackpot is claimed by just one winner compared to about an 8% chance we see a split jackpot. The most likely outcome remains no winners.

That being said, people generally don’t buy a lottery ticket based on expected values, seeing as the $2 cost of an individual lottery ticket is theoretically always more than the expected value (the house always wins). But that does beg the question: Why, then, are millions of people buying tickets?

Behavioral economists generally echo the establishment work from researchers Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who originally pointed out that humans have a tendency to overestimate low-probability events, such as the roughly 1 in 303 million odds of hitting a lottery jackpot.

Zack Guzman is an anchor for Yahoo Finance Live as well as a senior writer covering entrepreneurship, cannabis, startups, and breaking news at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @zGuz.

Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance

Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, SmartNews, LinkedIn, YouTube, and reddit.

Find live stock market quotes and the latest business and finance news

For tutorials and information on investing and trading stocks, check out Cashay