Tonight's Mega Millions jackpot is $1.6 billion. And you might wonder: If I bought every single possible ticket combination to guarantee myself a win, would I turn a profit?
The answer is . . . yes, in theory. But there are some BIG catches.
First, you'd need to buy 302,575,350 tickets to get every combo. That would cost you just over $605 million. So you'd have to find a way to put up that much cash up front.
You'd also need a syndicate of nearly 700,000 people filling out tickets for 10 straight hours today to have time to buy all the possible ticket combinations, since just doing Quick Picks won't work.
Then the lump sum payout is an estimated $904 million . . . plus you'd win a lot of secondary jackpots, like for matching five numbers but not the final ball, which would net you roughly $75 million more. That would give you a total of $979 million in winnings, or $374 million in profit.
But that's before taxes, which knock off roughly 40%. That takes your winnings down to $587.4 million . . . or a LOSS of around $18 million.
And, worst of all, if someone else hit the jackpot, you'd have to split it.
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