More than 385,000 people across the United States won prizes in the latest Powerball drawing, but only one incredibly lucky participant was able to correctly match all the winning numbers in the latest drawing. A Florida player correctly matched all the white balls 7, 23, 24, 56, 60 and the red Powerball 25 to win Monday's $214.9 million jackpot. This jackpot was the third big win in 2024 - on April 6, a player from Oregon became the owner of $1.3 billion.

What does the winner get?

The latest $214.9 million Powerball jackpot is, like any other, an announced prize. This means the lucky winner can receive an initial payment and then 29 annual installments along with a 5% annual interest rate. Alternatively, the winner could receive a lump sum cash payout of $100.1 million. A far cry from the nearly $215 million total, but still enough to change a life.

It is important to note that both amounts are before taxes.

Known as America's favorite lottery, Powerball is played in 45 states and jurisdictions, including the U.S. Virgin Islands, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The odds of winning the jackpot in this lottery are 1 in 292.2 million and the overall odds are 1 in 24.9.

The largest US lottery jackpot remains the $2.04 billion Powerball prize won in November 2022 on a ticket purchased in California. However, precedent shows that lottery winners face unexpected problems and often spend their money in record time.

Powerball Charitable Activity in the States

The Florida Lottery previously reported that the Powerball draw raised $81.3 million for the state's Education Improvement Trust Fund. The Pennsylvania Lottery said the losing streak generated $54 million in revenue that will be used to help older Pennsylvanians. Thanks to a $1.3 billion jackpot in early April, Arkansas Scholarship Lottery revenue for the month rose to $55.4 million from $51.3 million a year earlier. As we wrote earlier, the lottery brings in more than $1 billion annually to the state of Georgia. 

Powerball in 2015 and Mega Millions in 2017 changed their game designs to make winning the jackpot more difficult with increased odds. Lottery officials said the decisions were made to regularly increase jackpots to attract new players and increase net lottery revenue.

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