What Jackpot Amount Gets You to Play Powerball?

So last night there was one winning Powerball ticket sold in South Carolina for the $399,400,000 grand prize. It got me to thinking, what does it take to get people who don’t normally play the lottery to actually make the move to buy a ticket?

As you know the jackpot grows due to the amount of people who play, but no matter how many play, the odds are always the same, about 1 in 175,223,516.

So what dollar amount does it take to buy a Powerball ticket?  A recent survey says:

• 62% of respondents said they play the jackpot is big enough to make the news.
• 23% said they never play.
• 13% play when they think about it, regardless of the jackpot.
• 2% play pretty much all the time.