Information from the Iowa Lottery Blog:
The early details are in, and they show that 114,195 tickets sold here in Iowa have won prizes in Wednesday night's record Powerball drawing. Iowa had no jackpot winner this time, but seven tickets sold in our state came within one number of having at least a share of the jackpot. Strong sales nationwide had pushed the jackpot to $579.9 million annuity, or $379.8 million cash option. Full details, including the locations where the big winning tickets were sold, will come Thursday morning. For now, here's what we know:
- A total of 114,195 tickets purchased by Iowa Lottery players won prizes ranging from $4 up to $40,000. Four tickets purchased in Iowa matched four of the first five numbers and the Powerball to each win a prize of $10,000. Three more also matched those same numbers, but had the Power Play option added to them, so they each won a prize of $40,000.
- The winning numbers in the $579.9 million Powerball jackpot drawing were: 5-16-22-23-29 and Powerball 6. Complete results from all the lotteries in the game aren't available yet – they'll come in the overnight hours after all the records are processed.
- Iowa Lottery players bought more than $7.7 million in Powerball tickets for Wednesday night's drawing, including nearly $4.9 million in tickets Wednesday alone. During the busiest stretch from about 6-7 p.m., Powerball tickets were selling at more than $11,000 per minute across the state. But the average Powerball purchase in Iowa stayed at just $6, or three plays per ticket.
- The odds of winning the jackpot in Powerball are about 1 in 175.2 million because there are about 175.2 million ways you can combine the numbers in the game to make a play. By tracking sales, we can estimate how many of the possible combinations have been purchased for a particular drawing. About 80 percent of all the possible combinations were purchased for tonight's drawing.
