Winning lottery ticket worth $1.537 billion

A ticket bought in South Carolina won the Mega Millions lottery on Tuesday with a final prize of $1.537 billion, lottery officials said. The total is lower than the original estimate of $1.6 billion and comes in just shy of the all-time record from 2016. The winning ticket is worth about $877.8 million in a lump-sum cash payment, which most winners take instead of collecting the full amount in annual payments over three decades. South Carolina is one of the eight states where winners can remain anonymous. Whoever bought the ticket hasn’t claimed the prize yet.

Mega Millions is a national lottery game available in 44 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. About 60 percent of revenue from ticket sales goes to winners, and the lottery administrators and vendors split the remainder with the jurisdictions in which they operate. The odds of winning the jackpot was 1 in 302.5 million. Lottery prizes have been trending higher since officials for both Powerball and Mega Millions changed the game to worsen the odds while growing the jackpots in a bid for better sales.