Currently, Powerball has two weekly drawings and the third will be added Monday. The new move is to create larger prizes, according to the Missouri Lottery executive director, who currently leads Powerball, May Scheve Reardon. She said Powerball ticket sales tend to increase when jackpots are at least worth $400 million or more.
“Jackpot fatigue is real and by increasing the days of the draws we’ll be able to grow bigger jackpots faster and get more people interested in the game and turn over more money to our beneficiaries,” Reardon said.
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Plenty of people typically spend $2 on a Powerball ticket when prizes are lower and sales increase when they are higher, Reardon said.
In part that’s because, after recent jackpots that have topped $1.5 billion, even life-changing prizes can seem comparatively puny.
Powerball, overseen by the Urbandale, Iowa-based Multi-State Lottery Association, is played in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. In the 2021 fiscal year, the game had sales of more than $4 billion.
MegaMillions, the other lottery game offered throughout most of the country, is evaluating ways to remain “on the forefront of consumers’ minds” but doesn’t plan to add more drawings, said Pat McDonald, president of the Mega Millions Consortium and director of the Ohio Lottery.
Powerball also will add a new feature to the game called Double Play, which costs an extra $1 and offers a chance to win additional prizes of up to $10 million. Double Play initially will be offered in Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and Puerto Rico.
“We’ll be able to sell more, and more people will play and there will be more chances to win,” Reardon said.
The chance of winning a Powerball jackpot will remain exceedingly slim, at one in 292.2 million.
