The $758.7 million Powerball jackpot and winnings, by the numbers

Here's a breakdown of Wednesday night's jackpot drawing and other winnings.

ByABC News
August 24, 2017, 2:03 PM

— -- A single lottery ticket sold in Massachusetts won the whopping $758.7 million Powerball jackpot Wednesday night, making it the second largest grand prize in the game's history.

Powerball is played in 44 U.S. states plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, all of which oversee the game collectively.

Here are more details on the jackpot and other winnings announced:

The jackpot

The $758.7 million Powerball jackpot is the largest in North American history for a single winning ticket. The grand prize is second only to the game's highest-ever $1.6 billion jackpot, which was shared by three people in January 2016.

The estimated Powerball jackpot will now be reset to $40 million.

Winnings after taxes

The $758.7 million jackpot reflects the annuity payout option, in which the winner receives 30 payments over 29 years, increasing 5 percent annually.

However, lottery officials said nearly all winners take the cash option, which would be around $443.3 million minus federal and state taxes. Federal tax for the Powerball jackpot is 25 percent and Massachusetts state tax is 5 percent, so they would collectively eat up 30 percent of the winnings.

PHOTO: Chart showing the top 10 U.S. lotto jackpots in the Power Ball and Mega Millions games.
Chart showing the top 10 U.S. lotto jackpots in the Power Ball and Mega Millions games.

The winning numbers

A single ticket matched all six of the winning numbers in Wednesday night's Powerball drawing, snagging the massive jackpot. The lucky numbers were 6, 7, 16, 23 and 26, and the final number drawn, called the Powerball, was 4.

The odds of matching all six numbers are only one in 292.2 million.

In addition to the single jackpot winner, there were 9,397,723 other players who won non-jackpot prizes totaling $134,981,575. California had the most winners by far, with 1,172,477.

The jackpot winner

The Massachusetts State Lottery announced Thursday that 53-year-old resident Mavis Wanczyk is the jackpot winner.

Wanczyk purchased the winning Powerball ticket at the Pride Station and Store near where she works in Chicopee, located some 90 miles west of Boston. She bought two quick-pick tickets and a third ticket for which she picked out the numbers herself; the latter was the lucky one. Some of the numbers she chose were birthdays, one was her lucky number 4 and others were random, she said.

A colleague was with her at the time she checked her numbers and told her she had won the $758.7 million Powerball jackpot, the second-largest in the game's history. Wanczyk, a mother to a 31-year-old daughter and a 26-year-old son, said she was in shock.

"It's just a pipe dream I've always had," Wanczyk, who still appeared stunned by her luck, told reporters at a press conference Thursday. "I couldn't drive anywhere, I couldn't do anything."

It's the largest jackpot ever won in Massachusetts.

The store in Chicopee will receive $50,000 for selling the jackpot winning ticket and it will be donating the prize money, lottery officials said.

Tickets worth $1 million were also sold in Massachusetts -- one at Handy Variety in Watertown and the other at Sandy's Variety in Dorchester. The store in Watertown will receive $10,000 for selling the winning ticket, lottery officials said.

Initially, the Massachusetts State Lottery erroneously announced that the winning jackpot ticket was sold at Handy Variety. The lottery issued a correction Thursday morning.

"When manually recording the names of the retailers that sold the jackpot winning ticket and the $1 million winning tickets, the information was transcribed incorrectly," Michael Sweeney, executive director of the Massachusetts State Lottery, said in a statement. "We apologize for the confusion this created and remain thrilled that a jackpot winning ticket and two $1 million winning tickets were sold here in Massachusetts."

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