Powerball Ticket Sold With All Winning Numbers In $421 Million Jackpot

The largest ever U.S. lottery prize of $1.6 billion was split between three winning tickets in January.

Powerball, one of several games run by the Multi-State Lottery Association, a non-profit owned and operated by member states’ lotteries, is played in 44 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Players can either buy $2 tickets using their own numbers or have them randomly generated by a computer.

The Mega Millions lottery, also offered by the association, produced the country’s second-largest-ever prize, worth $656 million, in a 2012 drawing.

For every $1 worth of Powerball sales, half goes to prizes, 40 percent to state governments for causes such as education, and 10 percent to retailers who sell the tickets and other administrative costs. 

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Jacqueline Wong)