Tonight's Powerball Prize Is $1.2 Billion — Why Jackpots Are Getting Bigger

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Have you noticed that the Powerball prize money keeps getting bigger and bigger? There's a reason for that.

After no one claimed the $1 billion jackpot on Monday, the grand total for Wednesday's nights drawing has now gone up to $1.2 billion, which is a take-home of $596.7 million in cash, according to Powerball's latest press release. This is the second time in Powerball's 30-year history that the prize money has hit $1 billion and the biggest prize up for grabs in six years.

Monday's unclaimed winning numbers were 19, 13, 39, 59 and 36, and the Powerball was 13. The Power Play number, which can multiply non-jackpot winnings, was 3X.

Though nobody came anywhere close to scoring the grand prize money on Halloween night, "there were over 5 million winners in the draw with 10 lucky players winning $1,000,000 each," according to a tweet from Powerball.

Powerball's record for top-winning prize in history was sold in 2016. Three winners from California, Florida and Tennessee shared the $1.586 billion.

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"They've been engineered to get bigger," expert Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, told the Washington Post.

Matheson went on to explain that lottery companies make the grand prize roll over more often by lowering the odds and directing the additional $2 lotto ticket sales into the jackpot. The ever-rising number creates more buzz and excitement with the subsequent lotto announcements that circulate through the media. Case in point!

"The chance of winning has increased at roughly the same rate as the population of the states offering the game," he added.

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Additionally, there is an increased chance that winning players can be sharing the pot. For example, Matheson said if two people win the $1 billion jackpot, they could realistically walk away with as low as $185 million after taxes.

However, he added, "I wouldn't shed too many tears for a person who walks away with $185 million."

"As an economist studying gambling, I know the math," Matheson said. "And the math doesn't work out very well for gamblers."