Expected value calculator
The honest price of a ticket. Model the jackpot component of a lottery ticket and account for the chance that a jackpot is split when multiple people match.
Net expected value (jackpot only)
-$2.67
per $3.00 ticket — this is the average long-run return of the jackpot component, before lower-tier prizes.
Jackpot odds
1 in 13,983,816
Win probability
7.15e-6%
Expected other winners
0.143
Chance no one else wins
86.7%
Expected share of jackpot
93.2%
Expected jackpot value
$0.33
Break-even jackpot
$45,022,935
The jackpot at which this ticket's jackpot component would average out to zero. Most tickets are worth far less than their price — by design.
Assumptions: jackpot component only (lower tiers, taxes, and rollovers excluded); other players' tickets are treated as random and uniform. In reality players favor birthdays and sequences, which makes jackpot sharing more likely than this model shows — so real expected value is usually lower. Past results do not change these odds.