Since the new version of Mega Millions® held its first drawing on April 8, players in Missouri have continued to win higher prizes, bringing mega value with the game’s built-in 2X-10X multiplier. In the nine Mega Millions drawings since launch a month ago:
- 25,152 winning tickets have won $534,509 in non-jackpot prizes in Missouri. That’s a 382% increase from the $110,806 million those prizes would have been valued at in the old game.
- 7,579 Missouri players have won the $10 minimum prize for a winning ticket ($5 base prize with 2X multiplier), winning a total of $75,790 in prizes. The winnings at just that $10 prize level – not including the 3X ($15), 4X ($20), 5X ($25) and 10X ($50) prize winners who also matched just the Mega Ball – are more than double the $33,390 that would have been won by ALL the 16,695 winners who each would have won just $2 in the old game.
- 786 winning Missouri tickets at the 10X multiplier level have won more than $45,930 across the various prize tiers. The 10X multiplier level was introduced with the new Mega Millions on April 8. In the previous version of the game, players could pay $1 extra to add a non-jackpot multiplier to their play that maxed out at 5X.
- Prizes at every non-jackpot level are paying out at a combined 2.5 to 7.5 times the value they would have under the old game matrix, meaning prizes being awarded at every level are outpacing the game’s price adjustment.
- The first jackpot under the new matrix was won just four drawings into the new game. On April 18, a $112 million jackpot was won on a ticket sold in Ohio. Under the new game rules, the jackpot was reset to $50 million and is already up to $100 million again for the Friday, May 9, drawing.
Here is a summary of the prizes awarded in Missouri the first month of new Mega Millions game drawings:
| Mega Millions Match | Missouri Winning Tickets | $5 Game Prize Total | Old $2 Game Prize Total |
| 5 White Balls | 0 | $0 | $0 |
| 4 White + Mega Ball | 2 | $50,000 | $20,000 |
| 4 White Balls | 12 | $17,000 | $6,000 |
| 3 White + Mega Ball | 34 | $19,400 | $6,800 |
| 3 White Balls | 872 | $25,010 | $8,720 |
| 2 White + Mega Ball | 721 | $21,780 | $7,210 |
| 1 White + Mega Ball | 6,108 | $130,165 | $24,432 |
| Mega Ball | 15,287 | $228,090 | $30,574 |
| TOTAL | 23,036 | $491,445 | $103,736 |
*New game prize totals are calculated based on the number of winners at each prize level and each multiplier value (2X, 3X, 4X, 5X and 10X), combined with the prize value of each of those subsets. Old game prize totals are calculated based on the number of winners at each prize level and the base prize payout under the old matrix.
Compared to the old game, the new Mega Millions features bigger prizes at every non-jackpot prize tier, improved odds to win the jackpot, better odds overall, a larger starting jackpot, faster-growing jackpots, and no break-even prizes. Prizes in the new game range from $10 to $10 million vs. the $2 to $1 million in the old game. A full prize matrix is available here.
With higher value prizes embedded throughout every tier of the game, tickets for the new Mega Millions game now cost $5 per play. This is only the game’s second price adjustment since the first ticket was sold more than 20 years ago.
Since Mega Millions launched in 2002, it has produced seven winners of billion-dollar jackpots, all in different states. Since the last game change in 2017, more than 1,200 players have become millionaires, an average of three millionaires per week.
Mega Millions is a national game with tickets sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Drawings are conducted at 10 p.m. Central Time on Tuesdays and Fridays in Atlanta, Georgia.
