He won! A resident of the United States will see his life changed forever. And in proportions never reached in history. The record jackpot of $ 2.04 billion, up for grabs in the American Powerball lottery, was in fact won on Tuesday, after 40 draws without dedicating the minimum winner. “The California Lottery makes its first billionaire! The California Lottery announced Tuesday afternoon. The winning ticket was validated at a gas station in Altadena, a town of 40,000 inhabitants north of Los Angeles.
The numbers that brought luck to the chosen one were 10, 33, 41, 47 and 56 in addition to the bonus number 10 (the famous “Powerball”): the chances of finding them were only one in 292.2 million. Another 22 lottery entrants won $ 1 million by matching all five numbers, but not the bonus, the organization said.
Prior to the draw, the Powerball jackpot was estimated at $ 1.9 billion. But in the face of an influx of players looking to try their luck against a $ 2 bill – forcing them to postpone the draw that was originally supposed to take place on Monday – it eventually crossed the $ 2 billion mark. It is therefore a world record: never has the prize pool in a lottery been so high.
The winner will have to choose between getting the full sum in payments spread over three decades, or getting paid all at once, up to $ 997 million (net of various taxes), according to a Powerball estimate.
A world record
Let’s try to visualize what 2.04 billion dollars represent: almost 130,000 new Renault Twingoes (sold for 15,750 euros each), almost 3 times the price of a gigantic 18,000 square meter building on the Champs-Élysées sold last September at a record price ( around 700,000 million euros) or, again, it is equivalent or even higher than the gross domestic product (GDP) of small countries such as Saint-Martin or Grenada.
This $ 2.04 billion jackpot breaks the one-person money record in Powerball history ($ 758.7 million in 2017). But it also breaks the all-time single-winner winning record held by competitor “Mega Millions” ($ 1.54 billion in 2018). In 2016, this same Powerball jackpot had reached $ 1.58 billion (a record to date), but there had been … three winners. They then had to divide the sum between them.
The American lottery is on other levels than the ones we know here in France. According to the Française des jeux (FDJ), the highest amount at stake in EuroMillions was € 220 million. The jackpot was then won by a Frenchwoman, resident of Tahiti, in October 2021. On the French-French lottery side, the largest Loto jackpot was won in September 2021. At the time it was only € 26 million. .. C That’s almost 80 times less than what the Californian won on Tuesday. But enough to change your life.
