The Powerball Lottery - A Brief Overview Of Its History

By Author: Groshan Fabiola
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Founded in April 1992, the Powerball lottery game has rapidly caught on to the public, having evolved over time into a popular, highly appreciated, and successful multistate lottery. Building onto the model launched by Lotto*America, which entered the market in 1988, the Powerball is actually the direct descendent of the former US lottery. Since it hosted its first drawing and to this very day, the Poweball lottery has been building a solid reputation in the industry, and has broken numerous records in terms of jackpot size and total number of participants.

The Powerball lottery is officially recognized as the first US lottery game in history to have ever used the concept of two-drum drawings. In fact, the idea proved so successful that a number of other popular games, including Mega Millions and Australian Powerball, soon adopted it too. 1996 was an important year in the history of the Powerball - It marked the first game drawing ever held on the road, and the appointment of the Atlanta Summer Olympics as the event for hosting a subsequent drawing.

An important change took place along with the introduction ...
... of a policy that required lottery prizes to be paid out in cash, which entered into effect in 1997. Over the course of the same year, the annuity prize-payment option offered by the Powerball extended its duration from 20 to 25 years.

The State of Georgia and Its Current Stance towards the Powerball

Georgia was the first Powerball lottery member to leave the game back in 1996 so that it could join Mega Millions. This shift was short lived though, as the state re-joined the Powerball as a member this year (2010).

Introduction of the Power Play Feature

The nowadays very popular Power Play feature was introduced in 2001. Although at first there were five multipliers available for this feature, ranging from 1x to 5x, the 1x multiplier option was subsequently dropped.

The Role of Florida in Changing the Rules of the Game

The State of Florida officially embraced the Powerball lottery in January 2009, despite having obtained the permission to join the game as early as 1998. Along with the joining of Florida, the Powerball underwent another notable change. Before 2009, the graphs used for selecting white and red balls were 5 out of 55, and 1 out of 42, respectively. As of 2009 however, the graphs changed to 5 out of 59 for white balls and 1 out of 39 for red balls, a move that caused a decrease in the probability of hitting the jackpot from 1 in 146 million to 1 in 195 million.

The Impact of the Cross-Sell Agreement Signed with Mega Millions

The year 2009 brought yet another twist in the recent history of the Powerball, this time with respect to lottery sales policy: the US lottery behemoth sealed an agreement with the Mega Millions, document which instituted the cross selling of tickets in various jurisdictions throughout the country. Consequently, many members of the Mega Millions lottery were also added to the Powerball, raising the overall number to 44. The agreement proved beneficial for both parties, and at present the two prominent US lotteries cover a huge segment of the market in terms of lottery-playing action.

Over time, the availability and convenience of buying Powerball lottery tickets have increased considerably, especially with the emergence of many dedicated portals on the internet. Specialized websites not only simplify the task of buying tickets for the Powerball, but also provide lottery enthusiasts with constant updates on the game, and let them check recent and past lottery results at the click of their mouse.

For more resources about Powerball lottery or about US lottery or even about lottery results, please review these links.