Triple Try: Florida Lottery Adds Third Powerball Drawing In August

Written By JR Duren on July 21, 2021 - Last Updated on May 25, 2022
Powerball Adds Third Weekly Drawing

Big winners are made on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

That will change starting Aug. 23 when Powerball goes to three drawings a week by adding Mondays to the mix.

The new trio of drawings doesn’t increase a player’s chance of winning, but it does break up what used to be a three-day break between drawings.

The new schedule means Tallahassee will be busy, as the Florida capital is the site of the televised drawings.

Added day is a first for Florida

Official Powerball drawing records for the Florida Lottery stretch back to 2009. The first drawing in the state took place on January 7, a Wednesday. Since that first drawing 12 years ago, Powerball has followed the Wednesday-Saturday drawing schedule.

Starting Aug. 23, the Powerball drawings will switch to the three-day schedule.

Players can buy tickets for the contest at participating Florida Lottery locations. The Powerball drawings will continue to take place at 10:59 p.m. ET and will air on more than 100 TV stations across the country.

If players miss the live drawing, they can access recordings of the drawing on the Powerball website or via the Florida Lottery mobile app.

More drawings, more Florida winners?

According to Powerball records, Florida has been the site of 16 Powerball winners. Only Indiana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have more winning tickets.

Two of the top-six biggest jackpots have been won with tickets sold in Florida. The most memorable Sunshine State win came in 2016 when a winning ticket grabbed a slice of a historic $1.586 billion jackpot. The other big jackpot came in 2013 when a single ticket sold in Florida won a $590.5 million prize.

The most recent Florida jackpot win came this past month, when Ponte Vedra Beach resident Clay Tousey, trustee of The Love Your More Trust, claimed a $286 million prize.

And in April, a Lutz Publix sold a $235 million winner to 23-year-old Thomas Yi.

Odds of winning and what to do if you win

The odds of winning a prize through Powerball are 1 in 24.9. Winning the jackpot, on the other hand, is a true long-shot at 1 in 292.2 million.

Those odds do not change with the added third drawing.

To put that in perspective, players are more likely to be bit by a shark or get killed by a vending machine or bear than winning the Powerball jackpot.

If someone is lucky enough to win the jackpot, they have 180 days from the date of the drawing to redeem their ticket. All Powerball jackpot redemptions must be claimed at the Florida Lottery’s Tallahassee headquarters.

Photo by AP / Phil Sears
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JR Duren

J.R. Duren has covered the gambling beats for more than a dozen states for Catena Media since 2015. His past reporting experience includes two years at the Villages Daily Sun, and he is a first-place winner at the Florida Press Club Excellence in Journalism Contest.

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