Unnamed Michigan Player Banks $842 Million Powerball Ticket on New Year’s Day

What does a New Year’s Day miracle mean to you?

Well, to one Michigander down in the Flint suburb, it is almost a billion dollars in lottery winnings.

News broke on Jan. 1 that an unnamed Michigan player made a flying start to the year after they won $842.4 million from a Powerball ticket. This comes barely days after we reported that over $3 billion had been won in lottery prizes in 2023.

The winning ticket was purchased at Food Castle supermarket in the Flint area of Grand Blanc. As it stands, this is the 10th largest ever jackpot prize claimed in the entire country.

Although this jackpot prize is valued at $842.4 million, the winner will not be taking all of the lottery money.

For the Powerball lottery, there is an option to take a one-time lump sum payment, usually around 40%-50% of the grand prize or choose to be paid in annuity.

Generally, annuity payments offer a larger chunk of the prize money, but they tend to be spread out across 20 to 30 years.

If the winner opts for a lump sum payment, they will receive about $452.4 million. As at the time of compiling news, however, the lucky winner is yet to contact the Michigan Lottery for their jackpot prize.

The New Year’s winner matched both the five numbers of the Monday draw as well as the Powerball number, per the lottery rules.

12, 21, 42, 44 and 49 were the general winning numbers, while the Powerball number was 1. Two players, one in Florida and the other in Texas, both matched the main winning numbers, earning a prize of $2 million each. About four other players matched four of five lucky numbers in the tickets winning $1 million each.

Powerball is a progressive jackpot, just like Mega Millions, implying that the prize pot increases every time a drawing does not produce a winner. For this New Year’s Day winner, there had been 34 consecutive drawings that failed to produce a winning ticket, thus explaining the large prize.

California has been a rather disproportionately lucky state, especially with jackpot winners. The state has produced three of the ten largest jackpots in US history, all of whom are Powerball winners. In fact, the largest ever lottery sum recorded in the country came in 2022 when a Californian man cashed in $2.04 billion from a Powerball ticket.

Michigan is close in second position with two prize winners, thanks to the most recent ticket purchased in Flint.

The ticket is not only the 10th largest jackpot in the US, but it is the fifth-largest Powerball jackpot in the country and Michigan’s second biggest jackpot ever.

A 2021 Mega Millions jackpot win of $1.05 billion remains the state’s most notable win, though, coming in 9th place among US winners. This haul came from a group of teachers known as the Wolverine FLL Club of Oakland County who had purchased their ticket in Novi.

Powerball is managed by the Multi-State Lottery Association and sells tickets in 45 US states, the US Virgin Islands, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

The state ended 2023 with news that an Isabella County man won $2 million from a “Money” instant game ticket he had forgotten about. However, the biggest winner from the outgone year was a Kent County man who won $8.75 million from a Lotto 47 game.

Now, with a fresh, record-breaking lottery jackpot coming early this year, there’s a good chance this year may be a big one for Michigan lottery players. In 2023 alone, four lotteries in the US crossed the $1 billion mark. This suggests that lottery jackpots are on the rise, and have been so for the last three years, with all of the largest lottery prizes coming from the period.

Michigan sold almost $5 million worth of tickets in 2022, the mathematical equivalent of $500 per resident. Prizes cross $3 billion, the highest ever in the state. Expectations are high that the state will break its sales and prize records in 2023, a phenomenon which will project a positive trend as 2024 kicks off.