What was the biggest Mega Millions jackpot ever? Prize reaches $630 million after nobody wins $555 million jackpot

On July 19, the Mega Millions jackpot prize reached $630 million. However, there have been no winners for Tuesday's draw. Per the lottery website, the winning numbers were 2, 31, 32, 37, and 70, while the gold mega ball number was 25. However, Tuesday's $555 million was the fifth-largest jackpot money in the history of the grand lottery.

While the next draw is scheduled for Friday, the cash prize is estimated to be $360 million only. The lottery's website also noted a great amount of ticket sales for the Tuesday match, which crossed about $317 million in cash. Seeing the rush in ticket sales, the lottery was revised to $555 million to make the competition bigger.

Four winners drew the first five lucky numbers on Tuesday night, winning $1 million each. They hail from Arizona, California, North Carolina, and New Hampshire.

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Diving into the biggest Mega Millions lottery ever

While $630 million is a huge sum of money, the biggest Mega Millions jackpot ever existed was $1.537 billion, which an individual won in South Carolina on October 23, 2018.

The highest Mega Millions lottery, this prize is only second to Powerball's 2016 lottery payout of $1.586 billion. The Mega Millions jackpot money was claimed on March 5, 2019, but the winner chose to remain anonymous under South Carolina law.

The second largest Mega Millions lottery was $640 million at the time of drawing, but $462 million in cash was drawn in 2012.

In a statement to CBS, Jennifer Anderson, deputy director of the Colorado Lottery, told the news outlet that the lottery helps individual states collect enough revenue for schools, open spaces, and recreational areas. She noted:

"In many states, the most common is education, either in the form of scholarships and infrastructure in schools. In Colorado we have returned over $3.8 billion for outdoor open spaces, recreation. We just bought two new state parks, and that's important because Colorado population continues to grow and it is outpacing the amount of open spaces we have for people recreating."

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Further details on the new jackpot prize

NBC predicted that prize offers would be estimated at up to $530 million and $304.7 million in cash. Later, it resulted in $630 million after nobody could win the $555 million lottery.

While there were four big winners for the jackpot on Tuesday and no grand winner, no fewer than 52 winners could match the first four numbers and the mega ball number.

Moreover, three other jackpots were won in 2022, including $110 million in Minnesota on April 12, $128 million in New York City on March 8, and a whopping $426 million prize in California on January 28.

Ahead of last night's draw, the lottery managers also noted that there had been 15.5 million winning tickets since April, which includes 25 tickets worth $1 million or more.