Breaking Down The Mega Millions Changes For Florida Players
Mega Millions changes are on the way as The Mega Millions Consortium has announced a “new and improved” game, including larger starting jackpots that grow faster between rollovers and improved odds of winning. But what does it all mean for Florida players?
The Mega Millions In Florida
There’s been 4 Mega Million jackpot winners in Florida. On August 8th, 2023, $1,580,000,000 was won by a player in Neptune Beach. October 14th of 2022 saw a $494,000,000 winner in Bonita Beach. On January 5th, 2018, $450,000,000 was won by a player in Port Richey. Finally, back on March 18th of 2014, someone on Merritt Island won $400,000,000. A fifth jackpot of $36,000,000, was forfeited when someone from Jacksonville let their ticket expire. Baffling, right?
So let’s look at those 5 winning Florida tickets. 2 were sold at a Publix, 2 were sold at 7-11 gas stations, and the winner back in 2014 was sold at a Sunoco. All 5 were Quick-Picks, so maybe playing anniversaries and birthdays isn’t the way to go. Here’s my losing ticket when I was gunning for that 1.5 billion:
Mega Millions Changes
The first change you’ll notice is that a single ticket will be $5. Quite a jump, but it seems the Mega Millions changes are focused on ‘bet big-win big’. With the $5 ticket they promise improved odds of winning the jackpot and that you’ll see bigger jackpots more frequently. Other notable changes include:
- 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,” said Joshua Johnston, Lead Director of the Mega Millions Consortium. “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.”
Other than the $5 ticket, we’re still lacking specifics on the Mega Millions changes, most notably – the odds. With a 2.5x price increase, the odds will need to increase by just as much just to, well, remain the same. The multiplier and the removal of break-even winners are Mega Millions changes that should be easier to see. The multiplier was always something that you could add before, and now it looks to be priced in to the cost of the ticket.
The announced Mega Millions changes will launch in April of 2025, and we’ll be expecting an update on these bullet points sometime before then. I personally welcome these updates as I tend to be relatively disinterested in playing until the jackpot hits a billion. Like 300 million isn’t worth a trip to Publix, right? I’m guessing the game is being updated because others feel the same.
What’s New With The Florida Lottery Scratch Offs
A new $20 scratch off is out called “The Perfect Gift” with a $5 million dollar grand prize. Fun fact – the game has only been out 7 days and already one of the $5 million dollar prizes has been claimed from a player in Port Charlotte, Florida. I’m not making this up, the game came out on October 28th, and someone was at the Florida Lottery office on October 30th claiming that cash. Here’s the ticket:
The concept of this game seems pretty simple. Put it inside a Christmas card. 5 separate games should keep someone busy for a bit. Overall odds of winning something is 1:2.79, not bad. Additionally, the Florida Lottery just released 4 lower priced options entitled “Holiday Blowout” which should also make for some good (and lower priced) stocking stuffer and Christmas card options.
We’ll update you with the specifics of the Mega Millions changes when we learn more.
