Lottery officials say someone bought a ticket in South Carolina to win the Mega Millions jackpot with a final total of USD 1.537 billion, shy of the all-time world record.
The earlier Mega Millions estimate of USD 1.6 billion would have been a world record for lotteries, but actual sales came in below the USD 1.586 billion Powerball jackpot prize shared by winners in California, Florida and Tennessee in January of 2016.
The ticket sold Tuesday is worth about USD 877.8 million in a lump-sum cash payment, which most winners choose to take.
"The final total was less than the USD 1.6 billion estimate," said Carol Gentry, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Lottery, which leads a consortium of state lotteries participating in the Mega Millions jackpot.
"Estimates are based on historical patterns," she explained Wednesday morning in a phone interview with The Associated Press.
"The jackpot's been rolling since it was hit in July in California, but there are few precedents for a jackpot of this size. Typically, about 70 per cent of sales occur on the drawing day, so forecasting precise numbers in advance can be difficult. That's why we always use the term estimate."
"Our board has a policy to protect the winner because of all the risk associated with having that much money," South Carolina Education Lottery Director William Hogan Brown told ABC's "Good Morning America."
The biggest Mega Millions jackpot winner prior to this was a USD 656 million ticket sold back in 2012, Gentry said, "so it's a record for Mega Millions and it came very close to breaking the world record of all the jackpots."