Powerball drawing stuffed with $719 million jackpot

The Powerball game comes stuffed this Thanksgiving weekend with a $719 million jackpot.

If you won tonight’s drawing, you could claim the jackpot as a $719 million annuity or $333.3 million in cash.

Powerball has delivered five jackpot wins so far this year. Let’s hope the sixth jackpot win occurs in North Carolina.

Powerball players in North Carolina continued a streak of big wins in Wednesday’s drawing. For the third drawing in a row, a win of $50,000 or more occurred. Wednesday’s win occurred in the Powerball Double Play drawing.

Someone with a ticket purchased in Charlotte through Online Play matched four white balls and the red Powerball to win a $50,000 prize. By adding $1 to a $2 ticket, a Powerball player can get their same numbers entered in a second drawing through Double Play.

How does the Powerball game benefit our state?

• 25,881 prizes: The total number of winning tickets in Wednesday’s drawing.
• $13.5 million: The estimated amount raised for education on the current Powerball run.

Saturday’s drawing offers the second-largest Powerball jackpot this year, trailing only the $1.7 billion jackpot won Sept. 6 in Missouri and Texas.

You can buy Powerball tickets at any lottery retail location or through Online Play on the lottery’s website or the NC Lottery Official Mobile App. The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292 million.