Talk about getting 2023 off to a great start! If you’re a lottery player, this might be good news for you…
Somebody is over $33 million richer, courtesy of the Mega Millions lottery game. Lottery officials report the winning ticket matching all six numbers was sold in Massachusetts for the Tuesday, January 24 drawing.
Initially, lottery officials estimated the jackpot prize would be $31 million. But ticket sales exceeded expectations and it now looks like the final prize will be closer to $33 million.
There was only one winning ticket for the top prize in this multi-state lottery game. Should the winner choose the lump-sum cash payment, they will receive over $16 million before taxes.
To see the winning numbers and prize amounts for this and other Mega Millions drawings, go to the official lottery website.
Which retailer sold the winning ticket?
Do you buy groceries at Stop & Shop? Well, you might want to double check your lottery tickets because that’s where the winning ticket was sold. For selling the winning ticket, the store will receive a $50,000 bonus. Check the map out below for the store location:
What makes this particular lottery drawing so special?
This is a significant Mega Millions win in a few different ways. For the first time in the history of the game, the top prize has been won three times in the month of January.
With this month’s win included, the Mega Millions’ jackpot has been won in Massachusetts four times. It’s been over ten years since a Massachusetts ticket won the top prize. The last time was October 2012 for a prize worth $61 million, which was split with another winning ticket sold in California.
What was the largest Mega Millions prize ever won in the state? Well, that would be the whopping $294 million prize won by a Lowell player in July 2004.
But that’s not the biggest jackpot winner in the state’s history. That special designation goes to a Massachusetts Powerball winner that won a stunning $758.7 million in an August 2017 drawing.
A surprising number of lottery prizes go unclaimed
The Massachusetts State Lottery says the holder of the winning ticket will have one year from the drawing date to claim their money. The winner will need to go to the Massachusetts state lottery headquarters to claim their jackpot prize.
Not everyone who buys a winning ticket actually claims their money. The Boston Herald reports that the amount of unclaimed lottery winnings is going up. About $12 million in winnings went unclaimed in the state in 2022, while that amount was closer to $8 million the previous year.
Share the good news
Maybe you didn’t win this lottery, but who knows, perhaps a family member or friend has the winning ticket and doesn’t even realize it. If you know someone in Massachusetts who plays the lottery, share this article with them.
As we mentioned earlier, a huge number of lottery money goes unclaimed each year. You might be doing someone a “million-dollar favor” simply by nudging them to check their Mega Millions’ numbers.
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