It’s time to look for those lottery tickets you forgot about or maybe even buy a new one.
The Lotto Max jackpot for the next draw has an enormous prize pool of $114 million. While the main jackpot stands at $70 million, there are 44 Maxmillion prizes to be won.
The lottery draw is slated for Tuesday night, so keep your eyes, ears, and scratch-off tickets peeled. The last one was won in Ontario in June, and just months before that, a couple from the same lucky province celebrated winning the jackpot, too.
The $70 million maximum is as high as a lottery jackpot usually goes in Canada, but something even more massive is coming this fall for the first time.
According to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG), Canada’s biggest lottery game will increase its maximum jackpot to $80 million.
The corporation stated, “Players will have the chance to play for a jackpot as high as $80 million — an amount no Canadian lottery has ever reached.”
Along with this staggering new Lotto Max jackpot cap, Canadians will still have the chance to win Maxmillion prizes when it reaches and exceeds $50 million.
OLG says the first draw that could reach the humongous prize will happen on Tuesday, September 10.
Even though the Lotto Max jackpot is getting bigger, it doesn’t mean the price will. The play cost will remain $5 for three selections of seven numbers.
However, the odds of winning the main jackpot remain at one in 33,294,800 per $5 play and the overall odds of winning a prize stay at one in seven per $5 play.
According to OLG, when Lotto Max was introduced in 2009, a lottery game that offered multiple $50 million jackpots a year was unheard of in Canada.
It continued to make history, increasing the jackpot cap to $60 million in 2015 and then to $70 million in 2019.
All forms of gambling, including the lottery, involve risk and outcomes are based on chance. Individuals are strongly advised to gamble responsibly. If you are experiencing any signs of gambling-related issues, you can find resources here.