More than a dozen years after the last ticket price increase, in April we saw Mega Millions increase their ticket price to $5 [from $2] and increased their minimum jackpot to $50m [up from $40m]. Powerball meanwhile is still priced at $2 in all states [sans a couple states where it is at $3]. Powerball’s minimum remains lower, at $20m. But as noted below there are other statistical changes with Mega Millions, including in the ball counts and prize odds. We’ll explore this through a small series of posts, this being the first. Right now with Mega Millions jackpot north of $300m for the first time since April’s implemented changes, it will be exciting to see what enthusiasm players have towards this new format. If any. Note that there were 6 pots north of $300m in 2024, but now only 2 so far in 2025 [including the current unwon game.]
Idea details on new design
It is worth noting that lottery modifications don’t happen very often, and most of them are advertised. Though at times some changes occur without any pre-announcement. For the bulk of the changes noted here in this article, they were announced back in October 2024, with a launch date pre-specified for April 8, 2025.
The hope of course, from a mathematical modeling perspective, was that consumers would be energized and pay more for their tickets in general. With newfound momentum initiated with higher minimum pot size. Over time the hope too was that this would offset the slightly easier jackpot odds. So far, as we’ll show below, this has been off to a very slow start. But it’s also in the context of a slow lottery environment anyway during 2025. With Mega Million and Powerball combined daily sales of $16m in 2025, a drop from $24m in 2024.
There are some ideas on these data that are worth considering. The first is that while the ticket price seems to be a round-up from $2, it is a large relative increase particularly for a marginal consumer where every dollar is precious. There was never an explanation given for why the price rose so much, as opposed to $3 or $4, instead. Note Mega Millions saw daily sales for 2025 fall -46%, while for Powerball it has been -22% so far.
Now there is a small probability difference in the design, mostly the number of gold balls in the hopper. Previously it was 24, but now it is 25. Winning the 2nd prize of $1m doesn’t require this better odds however since only the matching 5 white balls count for winning $1m. We also don’t know if there would be any operational cost benefit from the fewer tickets sold due to higher pricing. This is something however we can explore in a later article as we verify the realized prize payouts. See most recent New York Times article on same.
History of ball counts
Here is a brief history of the changes in ball counts, and jackpot winning odds. In October 2013 [my birthday in fact], with 75 white balls and 15 gold balls in the pools, there was a 1 in 259m chance of winning Mega Millions. Then in October 2017, with 70 white balls and 25 gold balls in the pools, there was a revised chance of 1 in 303m. But now [perhaps as a hedge] with the same 70 white balls but only 24 gold balls in rotation, there is a slightly “improved” chance of 1 in 290m.
So far in the 78 days since the April change, it looks like the larger business impact for Mega Millions has been the higher ticket price than the better odds. If business history repeats there may be a chance to revise the odds in the future to make it more compelling still. Perhaps a design for players to choose out of about 65 white balls, instead of 70? Time will tell but this is my best speculation.
Once again the change of the gold ball selection is irrelevant and so the overall odds of winning the 2nd prize of $1m [with any level of multipliers augmented] barely changed. In both cases, pre and post April 2025, it’s roughly 1 in 12.6m.
Where are the consumers?
This is something we have still to understand, and the economy doesn’t yet provide all the answers. But now as the jackpot is north of $300m it will be interesting to see if wealthy players -in particular- are able to mass purchase tickets, something now commonplace in order to basically corner the market and drive up the jackpot until a forced win.
But so far Mega Millions has simply shown a slowdown in enthusiasm over the current $300m threshold. For example, while typically we have seen $300m jackpot levels reached at a speed of nearly 50 days [when the level happens], the current post-change Mega Millions has taken a very high 64 days to get to breach the $300m level. People are simply less enthused.
Where do we go from here?
This will be mathematical ideas to be explored soon, in future articles. However the complex design changes here are now being test witnessed live; and the results don’t appear to good at all. If the hope was for a new record jackpot [and new associated marketing buzz], this design so far is not as promising after just 78 days. We of course will continue to monitor this through the year, to see if things pick up meaningfully or not.
Couple side notes. The first is two decades later after graduating from Harvard University, thrilled to be invited back recently to talk about statistics in careers.
salil statistics [10k+ books sold, 36m reads, 1/4m follows]
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