More than 4,000 lottery tickets a minute were being sold at the peak of Tuesday’s buying frenzy, fueled by the record-breaking $1.6 billion Mega Millions jackpot.
Lottery officials say that’s $10,000 a minute adding to the big prize.
Andrea Pabon picked up her ticket at the Mobil station in Milwaukee’s Walkers Point neighborhood.
“Everyone hypes it up and gets it all exciting, it sounds exciting and I’m like, O.K., I’ll give it a go but I don’t play that often,” said Pabon.
Other’s buying tickets used a more diverse approach to their spending. Like Wyatt Caldwell who bought Powerball tickets as well.
”If I’m putting $20 I should have probably put it all on Mega Millions but I just wanted to diversify,” said Caldwell.
The Powerball drawing will be held Wednesday.
Lottery officials say there are more than 302 million different number combinations and estimate that 75 percent of the possible combos are covered with all the sales for Tuesday’s drawing.
So will they ever run out of combinations? It’s unlikely.
“If there are more sales for the next draw period, then there are for this draw period then statistically speaking the coverage will be higher,” said Jean Adler of the Wisconsin Lottery.
If the jackpot rolls over to Friday’s drawing it is estimated it could reach $2 billion. Tuesday’s potential jackpot is the biggest in history, worldwide.
