Mega Millions will go up to $5 a ticket from $2 starting Saturday, April 5, the second price hike since 2017 from $1 to $2.
Tickets will jump to $5 starting April 5. Other changes include:
- Improved odds to win the jackpot
- Bigger jackpots more frequently
- Larger starting jackpots
- Faster growing jackpots
- A built-in multiplier on every play, automatically improving every non-jackpot win by 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X or 10X – up to $10 million for matching the five white balls
- No breakeven prizes, meaning when a player wins, they’ll always win more than the cost of the ticket
“We are creating a game that both our existing players and people new to Mega Millions will love and get excited about playing,” Joshua Johnston, Lead Director of the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a statement.
“We expect more billion-dollar jackpots than ever before, meaning creating more billionaires and many more millionaires as the jackpots climb, plus this game will continue the important legacy of supporting great causes everywhere Mega Millions is played,” Johnston added.
Since Mega Millions launched in 2002, it has produced six winners of billion-dollar jackpots. Since the last change in 2017 more than 1,200 players have become millionaires, an average of 3 millionaires per week.
Mega Millions is a national game with tickets sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Drawings are conducted at 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesdays and Fridays in Atlanta, Georgia. Lottery profits support a wide variety of good causes and are allocated differently in each jurisdiction.