Saturday's Powerball jackpot will be the largest for any lottery game in American history after Wednesday night's $500 million drawing had no winner.
Powerball officials said Thursday the upcoming drawing would be worth an estimated $700 million. That would best the previous jackpot record, a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot won in March 2012.
Wednesday's jackpot was ranked as the sixth-largest offered in North America and the biggest since a $564.1 million Powerball prize shared by players from North Carolina, Texas and Puerto Rico last February.
The jackpot has been growing been growing since the last Powerball jackpot winner on Nov. 4 and will keep climbing if no one lands the big prize Saturday.
Powerball is played in 44 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
The odds of winning are one in 292.2 million, By comparison, the chance of being struck by lightning in a year is about one in 960,000. But as lottery officials often note, you have no chance of winning if you don't buy a ticket.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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