CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Wednesday night’s Powerball jackpot has grown to $1.73 billion, the second largest U.S. lottery jackpot in history.
No one hit the $1.5 billion jackpot Monday night and some West Virginia store owners think that’s because more people are buying tickets.
Lisa Flowers, manager of the Par-Mar 99 Store in Williamstown, said when the jackpot numbers increase, they often see more players.
“We’ve been pretty busy. We’ve had lines of people waiting to buy them. It’s really picked up a lot,” she told MetroNews.
Flowers said people are also buying more than one Powerball ticket and spending more to increase their chances of winning.
“When the Powerball is up, we sell quite a bit,” she said. “We’ve been having people buy high amounts more than usual.”
Sometimes more than one person gets in on a ticket, Flowers said.
“We have businesses like sometimes they all get together and they each come in and buy some for a whole group of people,” she said.
Flowers said her store sold a $10 million dollar lottery ticket about 10 years ago, but it would be great to get another winner from West Virginia.
“I’d love to see somebody from West Virgina win it or even our store,” she said.
Monday’s drawing marked the 35th consecutive Powerball drawing without a grand prize winner.
Wednesday’s jackpot amounts to a cash value of $756.6 million.
The odds of hitting the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.
A record Powerball jackpot of $2.04 billion was hit by a player in southern California in Nov. 2022.