Three Tickets Split Powerball $448 Jackpot
MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) - Florida's Powerball players headed back to work on Thursday.
Three tickets will split the $448 million Powerball jackpot, but none were sold in the Sunshine State. Two were sold in New Jersey, the third in Minnesota.
The winning numbers drawn Wednesday night were 5-25-30-58-59 and Powerball 32.
While no Sunshine State players got the Powerball, four winning tickets that matched all five numbers except the Powerball were sold in Florida.
Each of those winners won $1 million. The tickets were sold in Key Biscayne, Pensacola, Jacksonville and Fort Lauderdale.
A spokeswoman for the New Jersey Lottery says one of the tickets was purchased at a Super Stop & Shop store in South Brunswick and the other one at an Acme Markets store in Little Egg Harbor.
A recent game change intended to build excitement about the lottery increased the frequency of huge jackpots, and Wednesday's jackpot drawing comes only a few months after the biggest Powerball jackpot in history — a $590 million pot won in Florida by an 84-year-old widow. The second largest Powerball jackpot was won in November and split between two tickets from Arizona and Missouri.
And New Jersey's two new winners join Passaic resident Pedro Quezada, who was the lone winner of the March 23 Powerball drawing. The 44-year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic claimed a lump-sum payment worth $221 million, or about $152 million after taxes.
With a majority of the top 10 Powerball jackpots being reached in the last five years, lottery officials acknowledge smaller jackpots don't create the buzz they once did.
"We certainly do see what we call jackpot fatigue," said Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association. "I've been around a long time, and remember when a $10 million jackpot in Illinois brought long lines and people from surrounding states to play that game."
The revamp of Powerball in January 2012 changed the price of a ticket from $1 to $2, a move that upped the chances of the game reaching a major jackpot. There was a loss in the number of players, but the new game — which also created more chances to win smaller, $1 million and $2 million prizes — has brought in 52 percent more in sales, Strutt said. Sales were $5.9 billion in the fiscal year that ended in June.
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