- At $2 per play, the Powerball features odds as low as 1 in 14,494.11 to win just $100.
- At 1 in 292,201,338.00 odds to win the $100M grand prize, it is more likely that a vending machine falls on top of you or a coconut hits your head and kills you than winning.
- Since 2018, only 24 people have won the jackpot and the probability of taking home less than $5 in any given winning play hovers around 92%.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Powerball lottery continues to grow, increasing by 13 million dollars since Monday’s drawing. Despite the increasingly attractive payouts, the odds of winning any substantial money from the lottery have incredibly small odds.
The last time a major jackpot was cashed was on the eighth of this February, where $727 million was paid out of the $747 million total prize. Accessibility to the lottery is on the rise as well with online gambling sites even being able to offer online lottery tickets now in six select states.
The Case Against Playing the Powerball
Simply put, the Powerball and lottery in general is a poor investment to make, despite the huge potential for life-changing money. In 2020, states generated a near $27 billion in revenue from lottery related sales. Logistically speaking, if the lottery were easy or common to win then states would not continue using it as a major source of revenue.
Yet, many are surprised to find out just how uncommon winning truly is. The likelihood of winning has been crunched through the use of probability math to reveal that 91.9% of WINNING tickets will not even return $5. That huge percentage does not even factor in all of the losing tickets that are extremely common.
The lowest possible odds to win at least $100 is 1 in 14,494.11. A couple things that are more likely to happen than this by rate of frequency in a person’s lifetime include dying via: sunstroke, accidental gun discharge, choking on food, or being struck by a meteorite. Even having your house burned down is a good bit more likely than just winning $100 from the Powerball.
This all is just for a measly $100 too, if we scale this up to the 1 in 292,201,338.00 chances that winning the jackpot has, even egregiously rare events are more common. A few interesting ones include getting attacked by a shark, being crushed to death by a falling vending machine, and a coconut striking you in the head with enough force to kill.
Many of these propositions are completely ridiculous occurrences that happen to just a few people each year, yet are still more common than winning the Powerball.
This is all to say that the Powerball is generally a form of tax on gambling addicts as well as negatively affecting lower income people through the promise of a chance at winning millions or billions of dollars. Even to the relatively rational gamblers that only play the Powerball when the prize is big enough, $100M is a relatively small number that has been eclipsed for 26 drawings in a row in the last three months alone.
The bottom-line is that the Powerball as a whole is a horrible investment to make with your money and even those bullish on playing it should hold off until the jackpot prize is substantially larger. It would be wise to also keep in mind that more tickets do not increase your odds as each entry is independent of the other, so buying hundreds of tickets is not a “strategy” as much as it is burning money for the tiniest odds of winning even $100.
Those looking to win money through gambling would have much better odds placing money on online sportsbooks, playing casino card games, or generally wagering money on anything that is slightly more skill-based rather than essentially throwing away money at the intensely small odds presented by the lottery and Powerball.