Poweball jackpot: One lottery ticket bought in Florida wins its lucky owner $590 million jackpot
A Florida lottery player beat odds of one in 175 million to take home the $590 million Powerball jackpot.
After a frenzied few days of buying the $2 tickets across the nation, the winning numbers of 10-13-14-22-52 and a Powerball of 11 were drawn on Saturday night.
In what must be a lucky streak for the Sunshine State, Florida was also the setting for the draw, which broke Powerball records with its final jackpot of $590,500,000.
David Bishop of the Florida Lottery confirmed to NBC News that the winning ticket was sold at a Publix supermarket in Zephyrhills.
In total, there were 7,598,547 winning tickets, with prizes starting at $4 and moving up to $1 million, before reaching the huge jackpot.
Terry Rich, a lottery official in Iowa, said more details about the winning ticket were expected to be announced later by Florida lottery officials.
A Florida lottery player beat odds of one in 175 million to take home the $590 million Powerball jackpot
The odds of someone winning Saturday’s jackpot were improved after nearly all the possible number combinations were bought.
Lottery officials estimate that about 80% of possible combinations had been purchased.
With the promise of the largest draw in the game’s history, lines of people trying to buy last-minute tickets were forming in all of the 43 states and in Washington DC and U.S. Virgin Islands.
At a mini market in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, on Saturday, employees had to create two lines – one for Powerball customers and one for everybody else.
“We’ve had two winners over $10 million here over the years, so people in the neighborhood think this is the lucky store,” Gordon Chan said as he replenished a stack of lottery tickets on a counter.
At a store in Columbia, South Carolina, shop workers were so busy selling tickets that they had not had time to update the sign with the current jackpot figure.
The jackpot was the second largest in the world – just behind a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot in March 2012.
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