Powerball: What's the largest jackpot ever won in Louisiana?
(NEXSTAR) — Without a winner Wednesday, yet another record-setting Powerball jackpot is brewing, building to an estimated $725 million ahead of the next drawing.
At its current size, the Powerball jackpot stands as the eighth-largest in the game’s history. The newest jackpot now sits roughly $6 million behind the seventh-largest jackpot, a $731.1 million prize won in Maryland two years ago.
It’s also the third-largest in 2023, coming in behind a $754.6 million jackpot won in Washington in February, and a $1.08 billion prize won by a ticket in California in July (which has yet to be claimed).
Depending on where the winning ticket (or tickets) is sold, it could also become a state’s largest-ever Powerball jackpot.
Powerball is played in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Only five of these jurisdictions have never sold a Powerball jackpot-winning ticket: Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota, Wyoming, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. So if a winning ticket is sold in any of these areas, it’ll not only be their first but their largest.
The same can’t exactly be said for other states.
Should there be a winner in California, for example, it would be the state’s 14th Powerball jackpot, but only its fourth-largest. Within the last year, California has had two massive Powerball jackpots — a $2.04 billion prize, the largest lottery prize ever in the U.S., and the aforementioned $1.08 billion payout — that dwarf the current jackpot’s size.
Across the country in Pennsylvania, the next Powerball jackpot will be the state’s 19th, more than any other state has recorded. Despite its bountiful luck, the largest jackpot ever hit in the state was a $456.7 million prize hit in 2018.
In all but six states — California, Florida, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin — the current Powerball jackpot, worth an estimated $731.1 million, would become the largest ever. It would tie with Maryland’s largest-ever, a $731.1 million jackpot hit in 2021.
Below is an interactive map of the largest Powerball jackpots hit in every state.
According to data from Powerball, the average jackpot size over the last 20 years is about $205.2 million.
Powerball tickets are $2 each and drawings are held every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. ET. You have a 1 in 292.2 million chance of winning the Powerball jackpot and a 1 in 24.9 chance of winning any Powerball prize.