No winning tickets sold in Powerball Lottery Jackpot

The Powerball jackpot has soared to $550 million after no tickets matched the winning numbers in the latest drawing.

There were no jackpot winners for Wednesday night’s drawing.

The winning numbers drawn were 2, 11, 26, 34, 41 and a Powerball of 32. The next drawing will be held Saturday.

The odds of hitting the Powerball jackpot are one in 175 million. Statistically speaking you have a better chance of becoming president of the United States.

But, those long odds aren’t stopping anyone who wants a shot at striking it rich, and businesses aren’t complaining.

Powerball jackpots are always big. But, when they get this big, almost everyone seems to catch the lotto bug.

Nick Lanning bought a ticket Wednesday afternoon. He says, “Just thought I felt lucky this time, and hopefully win it.”

Pete Razo is a cashier at the Extra Mile in Thousand Palms, and he’s seen a huge increase in sales. “After it got about 300 you see a significant change you know a lot of people,” Razo says. “Just about every other people, every other customer excuse me was buying lottery tickets.”

And, just about everyone already has a plan ready for when they hit the jackpot.

Lanning says, “Buy a couple cars and have a good time.” Gloria Myers says, “Oh my god my family in the Philippines are very poor, I would like to help everybody.” Robert Placek tells us, “My wife enjoys it more than I do. She’s the dreamer of the family so she’s hoping she can win enough money to replace me I think that’s the plan.”

Powerball is still relatively new to California, but it’s already helping local businesses.

Razo says, “Oh it’s bringing in a lot of people. My understanding is it generates a lot of revenue for the state. But, regardless of that it brings in a lot of people and you know not just for purchasing of the lottery but everything else so it does the business good.”

Just about 30 cents for every dollar earned on tickets goes to education, and in just over a month, the state is already surpassing forecasted revenues.

We spoke with the California Lottery spokesman Alex Traverso who told us, “We’ve been in the game for about five weeks now, our first ticket sales were April 8th, and in that time we’ve sold about 80 million dollars maybe a little bit more after tonight.”

The 360 million dollar jackpot was the third largest in the games history. But no one hit all six numbers on Wednesday night, bringing the new jackpot for Saturday’s drawing to at least 475 million dollars.

Now for the last three drawings California has shattered national records in single day ticket sales.

Last Wednesday saw an incredible 3.6 million dollars, but this Wednesday’s was even higher.

Traverso continues, “It’s interesting to note, that today we sold about 8.6 million in sales, Powerball tickets just today. So sales are obviously going through the roof because that jackpot continues to grow.”

Six California players did hit five numbers, winning more than 250,000 dollars.

The new $550 million jackpot is the second largest jackpot in Powerball history.