As the jackpot sum rises, so does the number of tickets purchased, says Josh Dziedzicki, territory manager of the Tipp City RoadDog store.
“There are a few different types of players we see; we get players who just get one or two tickets when the jackpot is high, then we’ll see people who have 10-year-old tickets and they’ll play those same numbers every time,” he said.
Ohio ticket buyers spent $8.9 million on Powerball tickets in the Monday night drawing alone, according to Ohio Lottery officials.
Nobody matched the jackpot numbers that night, but two $1 million winning tickets — which requires five matching numbers — were purchased in Ohio, one in Newport and another in Norwalk.
According to the Ohio Lottery Commission, the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot — which requires matching five numbers, plus a Powerball number — is one in 292 million. For comparison, the odds of getting struck by lightning are less than one in 1 million, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
Rebecca Josef was visiting Ohio from Tennessee on Tuesday and purchased one set of Powerball numbers at a Dayton-area TrueNorth station, though she said she typically doesn’t play the lottery because she’s a “sore loser.”
“I’m not much of a gambler, but I like to play blackjack and I’ll do a scratch-off every now and then,” she said, adding that if she were to win Wednesday’s Powerball drawing, she’d use the money to take care of her family and invest the rest.
Brad Baker, of Vandalia, said he always plays the lottery when the jackpots are big. “If it’s big enough to hit the news, that’s when I’ll play,” he said.
Baker also purchased just one set of Powerball numbers Tuesday afternoon. He has dreams of becoming his own boss and said he would use the prize money to better himself.
“I’ve worked in food service for almost 20 years, so I’d probably open my own restaurant and find something I can do to take the money and build it into longterm wealth,” he said.
The last Ohio Powerball winner ($124.9 million in 2014) was bought in Conneaut on the Pennsylvania border and Lake Erie shore — as far away from Dayton as you can be and still be in Ohio.
Ohio has had only slightly better luck in the Mega Millions lottery drawings in recent years, with two jackpot winners since November 2015. One of those was a $143 million ticket sold at Fat Daddy’s Road Dog in Moraine in May 2018. The winner chose the cash option, but claimed the jackpot via a passive trust to protect their identity.
Before that, a group of 15 Piqua city workers hit a $207 million Mega Millions jackpot just before Christmas in 2008.
If this drawing is your lucky day, just know that the Ohio Lottery Commission will withhold 28% in income tax up-front (4% state and 24% federal), and you’re likely to owe millions more the following April, given the 37% federal tax bracket for the highest earners, plus the possibility of city income tax.
Lottery profits go to an education fund to benefit Ohio schools. State officials said the Ohio Lottery contributed $1.4 billion to the fund last fiscal year.
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