Powerball lottery ticket forms at Bluebird Liquor on December 1, 2025 in Hawthorne, California. The Powerball jackpot is now $1 billion (yes, that's billion with a b -- with caveats). Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Whether or not anyone wins the billion-dollar Powerball jackpot on Saturday, at least one of the losers might already be known: Mega Millions.

Powerball tickets, priced at $2 apiece, are selling briskly, as lottery tickets tend to do around ten-figured advertised prizes. In contrast, the next Mega Millions jackpot on Tuesday is a comparatively paltry $70 million.

The two jackpots might differ by hundreds of millions – but the number that helps explain why is much smaller.

Three dollars. That’s how much Mega Millions hiked its ticket price in April, more than

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