The Mega Millions lottery game is making changes in April that it said will benefit players with “improved” odds of winning prizes — even the jackpot.
Under a new prize structure starting on April 8, lottery players can win larger non-jackpot prizes, such as between $10 and $50 instead of just $2. However, ticket prices are also going up from $2 to $5.
“Beyond big jackpots, players told us they want bigger non-jackpot prizes and that’s exactly what this new game delivers,” Joshua Johnston, lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a statement. Johnston added that non-jackpot winners will take home between two- to 10-times more prize money.
For jackpot winning hopefuls, the odds of winning have improved to one in 290.5 million from one in 302.6 million due to the game losing one gold ball. With 24 balls instead of 25, the odds of winning any prize is also improving from one in 24 to one in 23.
Here are five things that are more likely to happen to a person than winning the Mega Millions jackpot.
Meteorites hit Earth thousands of times a year, but its rare (though, not impossible) that a person will be hit by one since the space debris usually burns up as it enters the atmosphere.
According to a 2014 paper by Tulane University earth sciences professor Stephen Nelson, the lifetime odds of a person in the U.S. dying from being hit by a meteorite (which are usually fragments of asteroids) is one in 1.6 million.
The odds of being canonized — or being declared a saint by the Pope — in the Catholic Church is one in 20 million, according to Gregory Baer’s book, “Life: The Odds.”
If every U.S. citizen was running for the nation’s highest office, the odds of being elected as president of the United States would be one in 32.6 million. The chances could be higher too, considering not every U.S. citizen was born in the country.
The odds of winning a jackpot when gambling with a slot machine in a casino are higher than playing the Mega Millions.
But it can still be tough, with Investopedia putting winning odds between one in 5,000, to one in 34 million.
The odds of being crushed by a vending machine are relatively low at about one in 112 million, according to this Irish vending machines seller. The deaths are usually the result of a vending machine falling on someone who is trying to get an item that is stuck inside.
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