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The Biggest Prize in Lottery Courier History: Jackpocket Player Wins $112M on Mega Millions

One lucky Jackpocket user in Arizona won $112 million on a Mega Millions ticket purchased using the app. That’s over 10x higher than the biggest online casino jackpot in U.S. history.

The Arizona Lottery office with lottery balls decorated in front
Photo by Gregory E. Clifford/Shutterstock
Dan Holmes Avatar
4 mins read
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One lucky but anonymous Jackpocket user from Arizona has won $112 million on a Mega Millions ticket they bought through the lottery courier app. That’s an all-time US and world record for the largest jackpot won through a courier service. It’s also way more than anyone has ever won at an online casino.

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DraftKings purchased Jackpocket for $750 million

The winner bought the ticket via Jackpocket, a lottery ticket buying app owned by DraftKings Holdings Inc., which is known as a courier buying service.

According to Jackpocket, the company has now facilitated the sale of 61 tickets that have won prizes of at least $1 million in the U.S..

A lottery courier service is a licensed middle man of sorts that allows consumers to buy lottery tickets for popular national, regional, and state lottery games through the convenience of their mobile device. Customers purchase the tickets online, while Jackpocket then physically buys the tickets from a retail provider and scans the tickets to pass on to the customer.

DraftKings, which got its start as a daily fantasy sports provider, and now offers online sportsbooks and casinos in several states, and made a splash in Feb. 2024 with the the purchase of Jackpocket, the leading lottery courier service in the United States. 

While FanDuel matches or exceeds rival DraftKings in many regions of the U.S. as the two gambling behemoths do a dance for market share in the U.S., as of yet the former has not launched a service to compete with Jackpocket. Some industry observers think FanDuel was outbid for Jackpocket last year. Reports are that DraftKings dug deep into its pile of cash for $750 million to buy the lottery ticket courier service.

Progressive slot jackpots are big, but national lotteries are bigger 

How does this lucky Arizonian’s prize compare to what you can win at an online casino? The biggest prizes you’ll see at an online casino come from progressive jackpots. Often these are attached to slots, but some casinos include them for table games as well.

Progressive slots jackpots can get pretty big, but they can’t rival national lottery sales. To date, the biggest online slots jackpot in the US is $6.45 million, which a player in New Jersey won playing Fruit Blaster at BetMGM Casino.

That record is about to be broken. The DraftKings Progressive in Michigan is now over $8.5 million and it’s guaranteed to hit eventually. When it does, it’ll blow that Fruit Blaster prize out of the water. And yet, even if it goes over $10 million, it will still be a zero short of rivaling that Jackpocket-supplied Mega Millions ticket.

The reason is mostly market size. Tickets for Mega Millions and Powerball are sold in 45 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Unfortunately, even when online casinos operate in multiple states—DraftKings is in five, for instance—regulations require that each state’s jackpots be kept separate.

MegaMillions and Powerball are National Brands in Lottery Market

MegaMillions is a national lottery that builds a giant jackpot from players across 45 states. Players can buy tickets either in-person at retail locations, or online via mobile apps like Jackpocket, which is what the Arizona winner used to earn the $112 million prize. That customer matched six numbers that were drawn for the Mega Millions game last Friday night, Jan. 17. White balls 8, 10, 37, 54, and 69 came up, and the gold Mega Ball was number 22. 

Another multi-state lottery game, Powerball, also gathers from consumers across the U.S. map to frequently build jackpots in excess of $25 million. Consumers using Jackpocket or other licensed lottery courier apps can buy tickets for Powerball in several states.

Through Jackpocket, DraftKings has another way to reach consumers who are interested in the convenience of grabbing lottery tickets. It extends the reach of the company in a highly competitive gambling industry. The U.S. has seen rapid growth of online sports betting since 2018, but that growth has stemmed a bit in the last 18 months. Two massive states, California and Texas, sit as prized trophies when and if they legalize online casinos and/or sports betting.

In most states, the lottery has few hurdles to offering online courier ticket buying services. Unlike the complicated process of legalizing and launching online casinos and sportsbooks, lottery services can be brought into the online age rather easily. Some states sell their own lottery tickets via a state-run website or app. Jackpocket is currently in 17 states, plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico.   

In addition to brokering the sale of tickets for national lottery games, Jackpocket provides the sale of digital scratch-off tickets in a handful of states, including Texas.

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