Powerball winners come from every participating state, including Ohio, where these Powerball jackpot success stories take place.
Powerball winners come from almost everywhere. Different participating states share stories all the time of small prize winners, million-dollar winners, and jackpot winners. But if you live in Ohio, it may feel like folks in your state are winning a little more often than others. Is Ohio just luckier?
If you go looking for Powerball winners, it may seem like an awful lot of them bought their tickets in Ohio. Ohio Lottery officials shared some of the stats. And there have been 58 lucky Powerball winners who won the $1 million prize, since 2012, as a result of matching five white balls, but not the red Powerball. More recently, in May of this year, a $2 million winning ticket was sold at a Speedway gas station located in Grove City, Ohio. Two of those other winners bought their tickets at Warren’s View Food Mart and Sandusky, Ohio’s VFW Post #2529, too. At first glance, it sure feels like a lot of winning is going on in the Buckeye State. Or is it?
Officials have shared a few stats since Ohio began participating in Powerball back in 2010. The first Powerball tickets were sold on April 16 of that year for the April 17 inaugural drawing. The first winning ticket came soon thereafter, on June 2, when one lucky winner walked away with a $261.6 million jackpot, sold at the Hub Carryout in Sunbury.
Since that 2010 jackpot, however, Ohio has only ever had two other Powerball jackpot winners. The second winner was announced just a few weeks after the first jackpot winner in June 2010. That was a split win with a Montana resident, although it was still worth $97 million. The third jackpot winner occurred in July of 2014 and was worth $122 million. But that’s it for Ohio jackpot winners, which pales in comparison to its geographic neighbor, Indiana, which is home to 39 jackpot winners, making it the winningest Powerball state of them all.
Ok, so maybe Ohio’s not luckier than any other state. But it does seem to have some impressive stats. The Ohio Lottery has a tally of 8,559 total winners over the last 20 years, accounting for 2.75% of all Powerball winning claimants nationwide.
And while Ohio isn’t the home state of the world record Powerball jackpot, it wasn’t a loser in that drawing either. The biggest recorded win of $1,586.4 million was split between three states in 2016, Tennessee, Colorado, and Florida. But in that same drawing, there were three $1 million winners from, you guessed it, Ohio, sold in Toledo, Centerville, and Cleveland.
Speaking of Cleveland, another Powerball winner was just announced in June. Another Cleveland resident won herself a cool $1 million when she bought her tickets via the app on her mobile device. Because she purchased online, this 30-year Ohio native received an in-app notification of her seven-figure win.
The truth is your chances of winning any Powerball prize are the same regardless of which state lines you cross. The official odds for a jackpot win are one in 292,201,338. And those odds don’t shift whether you’re in Texas, New York, California, or Ohio. And becoming a $1 million winner, matching five numbers, is a one in 11,688,054 chance. Your odds of matching the four white balls and the Powerball are officially one in 913,129.
So, it might seem like Ohio is in the headlines more often with Powerball winners. But in the end, the state in which you live or buy your Powerball tickets won’t affect your chances of winning at all. It will, however, increase your odds of winning if you go out and play!