Current Jackpot: $250,000,000
With the recent agreement between the Multi-State Lottery Association and Mega Millions to begin cross-selling Mega Million and Powerball lottery tickets, players across the U. S. have found their horizons broadened with more locations than ever to buy that lucky jackpot prize winning ticket!
New Jersey started the ball rolling in this expansion back in March 2009 when they requested permission to join forces with Powerball and begin selling
Current Jackpot: $39,000,000
Powerball tickets along with the Mega Millions lottery tickets they were already selling.
Shortly thereafter, discussions were taking place about allowing every United States lottery to cross-sell tickets for Mega Millions and Powerball.
Things progressed quickly from there.
In October of 2009, the Multi-State Lottery Association and the Mega Millions consortium announced that an agreement had been reached about allowing cross-sales of Mega Millions and Powerball lottery tickets in all of the jurisdictions in the United States.
On January 31st, all was in readiness to let the cross-selling begin, and the Powerball lottery branched out to 43 jurisdictions, along with an addition of 10 new Mega Millions members across the USA.
Not long after the new cross-selling agreement went into effect, in March of 2010, New Jersey had the honor of becoming the first jurisdiction previously selling only Mega Millions lottery tickets to produce a jackpot prize winning Powerball ticket worth a fabulous $211 annuity with the cash option chosen by the lucky winner.
In May of this year, North Carolina---formerly only selling Powerball tickets---had the distinction of being the first jurisdiction to sell a winning Mega Millions jackpot winner worth a cool $12 million annuity!
No doubt the players in these jurisdictions are overjoyed to be able to increase their chances of hitting a big jackpot lottery prize, made possible by the cross-selling of Mega Millions and Powerball lottery tickets.
Currently, here are the jurisdictions with cross-sales of both Powerball and Mega Millions lottery tickets:
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- Connecticut
- Colorado
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Georgia
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
At present, Florida, Louisiana and the U. S. Virgin Islands are not cross-selling Powerball and Mega Millions lottery tickets. These jurisdictions sell Powerball tickets only.
California is not selling Powerball tickets, only Mega Millions.
Perhaps after seeing the popularity of the Powerball Power Play, 30 of the lotteries that joined Mega Millions after the cross-sell initiated the “Megaplier” option.
This option functions much the same as the Powerball Power Play, except it is for the Mega Millions lottery.
Based on information found on the New Hampshire Lottery website, all of the current jurisdictions who are not offering the new Mega Millions Megaplier will be required to do so by January of 2011.
There is speculation that this cross-selling agreement is only a forerunner to a merger of the two giant lotteries, Powerball and Mega Millions, into one even larger, single lottery.
If that takes place, the jackpot winning prizes will be absolutely enormous, and we should all make sure to buy our tickets in hopes of getting the lucky numbers and becoming rich beyond our wildest dreams!