Maine now has its first-ever Mega Millions jackpot winner when a ticket purchased in the state matched the winning numbers for the lottery’s estimated $1.35 billion grand prize.
The lucky combination of numbers drawn on Friday night was: 30, 43, 45, 46, 61, and gold Mega Ball 14.
The winner, whose name is not yet known, overcame steep odds of 1 in 302.6 million, which led to 25 straight drawings without a claim on the jackpot.
“Congratulations to the Maine State Lottery, which has just won its first-ever Mega Millions jackpot,” Pat McDonald, Ohio lottery director and lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a statement early Saturday.
The prize of $1.348 billion, or $723.5 million in cash, is the second-largest in the game’s history and fourth over a billion.
To claim the total $1.35 billion, the winner would need to take the money in an annuity with annual payments over 29 years. Most jackpot winners opt for the quicker but reduced cash option.
The largest Mega Millions jackpot remains $1.537 billion claimed by a single ticket in South Carolina in October 2018.
Friday night’s jackpot win is also the seventh to overcome the ill fortune of Friday the 13th since the game began in 2002 and the first since October 2017.
Overall, there were 7,072,832 winning tickets across all nine prize tiers in the January 13 drawing, with 14 tickets matching all five white balls to win the game’s second-tier prize of $1 million.
Four were sold in New York, two in California, and one each in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas, Mega Millions said.
Mega Millions is played in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The next grand prize drawing on January 17 will reset to its current starting value of $20 million and a cash option of $10.7 million.
