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Becoming a millionaire costs a pretty penny.
The price to play Mega Millions will soon increase by more than double as part of a plan to revamp the game and increase the cash payouts, the company announced Tuesday.
The so-called “new version” of the beloved lottery game is set to offer bigger prizes for all winners starting April 8 — all while jacking up the ticket price from $2 to $5.
Lottery officials, however, promised that with a more expensive price tag comes a better prize.
In addition to larger prizes for both the massive jackpot winners and the lesser prize winners, the lowest prize will now be at least double the cost of the ticket, officials said.
The company also says the revamped game will bring better odds of winning, larger starting jackpots, and faster-growing jackpots.
“Beyond big jackpots, players told us they want bigger non-jackpot prizes and that’s exactly what this new game delivers,” Joshua Johnston, the lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium, wrote in the release.
Since the new game assigns players a random multiplier, “players who had won $2 in the old game will now take home $10, $15, $20, $25 or $50 under this game,” Johnston said.
“Those who had won $500 under the old rules will now take home $1,000; $1,500; $2,000; $2,500 or $5,000 in this new game. Non-jackpot prizes at every level are going up by 2X to 10X,” Johnston added.
Mega Millions said the new rules improve the odds of winning the jackpot from 1 in 302,575,350 to 1 in 290,472,336 due to the removal of one gold Mega ball from the game. The new version will have 24 instead of 25 Mega Balls, officials said.
The starting jackpot is also steeper at $50 million, whereas the current game starts at just $20 million.
Given the minimum prize of $10 on a winning ticket in the new game, every winning ticket will pay out at least double the cost to play the game, according to the release.
The overall odds of winning any prize will improve to 1 in 23 from 1 in 24, officials added.
The increased ticket cost is only the second time prices for the game have risen in the game’s 20-year history.
The changes will take effect after the final drawing of the current game on April 4.
“Unless someone wins the jackpot on the April 4, 2025, drawing, the jackpot from the current game will roll into the new game and continue to grow with ticket sales from the new game,” the release said.
Since the game launched in 2002, seven billion-dollar jackpots have been won in seven separate states and over 1,200 players have become millionaires, the company said.
