From $1 Ticket to $1 Billion: The Complete Timeline of Mega Millions History

Most people know Mega Millions as the lottery with the giant jackpots. Fewer know that it started life under a completely different name, in just six states, with a ticket that cost a dollar and a jackpot that seemed modest by today's standards. Here's the full story — from a regional game nobody outside the East Coast had heard of, to one of the biggest lotteries on the planet.

1996: The Big Game Is Born

The lottery we now call Mega Millions first drew its numbers on September 6, 1996 — but it wasn't called Mega Millions yet. It launched as The Big Game, a multi-state draw available in just six states: Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Virginia.

The format was simple: pick five numbers from a pool of 50, plus one bonus number from a pool of 25. Tickets cost $1. Draws happened once a week, on Fridays only. It was modest, regional, and few people outside those six states paid it much attention.

1998–1999: First Expansions

The game grew quickly. In February 1998, a second weekly draw was added on Tuesdays, doubling the number of chances to play and win each week. New Jersey joined in May 1999 as the seventh participating state, and the format received its first significant tweak: the second ball pool was expanded from 25 to 36, making the jackpot harder to win — and therefore more likely to roll over and grow larger.

Also in 1999, jackpot winners were given the option to take a one-off cash payment rather than receiving the prize spread across annual instalments. This change would prove hugely influential — the vast majority of future winners would choose the cash option.

2002: The Rebrand That Changed Everything

May 2002 marked the most important moment in the game's history up to that point. The Big Game was officially rebranded as Mega Millions, and two major states — New York and Ohio — joined the consortium. Washington followed later that year, Texas in 2003, and California in 2005.

The name change wasn't just cosmetic. It signalled a new ambition: a truly national lottery with a reach and jackpot potential that The Big Game had never had. Ticket sales surged. Rollovers became longer. The jackpots got bigger.

2010: The Cross-Selling Agreement with Powerball

For years, Mega Millions and Powerball operated in entirely separate state networks. You could play one or the other depending on where you lived, but not both. That changed in January 2010, when a landmark cross-selling agreement allowed states to offer both lotteries simultaneously.

Overnight, Mega Millions went from a game available in roughly half the country to one accessible in nearly every state. Ticket sales increased dramatically, which meant jackpots could grow faster and larger than ever before. The Megaplier — a feature that multiplied non-jackpot prizes, which Texas had been offering exclusively since 2003 — was rolled out nationwide at the same time.

2012: The First Billion-Dollar Moment

On March 30, 2012, Mega Millions made history. The jackpot reached $656 million — the largest lottery prize ever awarded anywhere in the world at that time. Three winning tickets split the prize: one in Kansas, one in Illinois, and one in Maryland. Each ticket was worth around $218 million.

The draw broke records for ticket sales in a single week and introduced millions of new players to the game. It was the moment Mega Millions became a household name well beyond the lottery community.

2013 and 2017: Two Major Rule Changes

The game's format has been adjusted several times to keep it competitive and attractive. Two changes stand out:

In October 2013, the number pool for the main balls was expanded from 50 to 75, while the Mega Ball pool was reduced from 46 to 15. The effect: longer rollovers and even bigger jackpots — at the cost of slightly harder odds.

In October 2017, the most significant restructuring since the rebrand took place. The main ball pool was changed to 70 numbers, the Mega Ball pool expanded to 25, and the minimum starting jackpot was raised to $40 million. The odds of hitting the jackpot shifted to approximately 1 in 302.5 million. The era of nine-figure jackpots becoming genuinely routine had begun.

2018: The First Billion-Dollar Jackpot

On October 23, 2018, a single ticket sold in South Carolina matched all six numbers to claim a jackpot of $1.537 billion — the largest Mega Millions prize ever won to that point, and the second-largest lottery jackpot in US history at the time.

The winner took the cash option of approximately $877 million before taxes and remained anonymous. It was the first time a Mega Millions jackpot had crossed the billion-dollar mark, and it felt like a threshold moment — proof that the restructured format could generate prizes that had previously seemed impossible.

2021–2024: The Billion-Dollar Era Becomes Normal

What once seemed exceptional became almost expected. A run of historic jackpots redefined what "big" meant for American lotteries:

• July 2022: $1.337 billion won by two ticket holders in Illinois.
• August 2023: $1.602 billion won by a single ticket in Florida — the largest Mega Millions jackpot ever, and the third-largest lottery prize in US history. The winner, identified only through an LLC called Saltines Holdings, chose the cash option of approximately $794 million.
• March 2024: $1.13 billion won by a single ticket in New Jersey, making it the state's biggest lottery winner of all time.

In just six years after the 2017 rule change, Mega Millions had produced four jackpots exceeding one billion dollars.

2025: New Rules, New Era

The most recent major change came in 2025, when Mega Millions introduced an automatic multiplier feature to replace the optional Megaplier add-on, while also adjusting the Mega Ball pool to improve the overall odds of winning non-jackpot prizes. The minimum starting jackpot was also raised, reflecting the game's evolution into a consistently large-prize lottery.