Getty Blank Powerball slips are displayed at Kavanagh Liquors.
Powerball is breaking records with a $1.9 billion drawing tonight on Monday, November 7. With so much money on the line, you may be interested in streaming the drawing online live as it happens. Here’s how you can watch the Powerball drawing on your computer, phone, or mobile device from wherever you are.
Options for Streaming the Powerball Drawing Live
The following streaming sites typically show the Powerball drawing live. It may be a good idea to have several open in different tabs, just in case any servers crash from so many people wanting to watch the drawing at once.
Remember: the drawing will happen at 10:59 p.m. Eastern on Monday, November 7. (In other time zones, that’s 9:59 p.m. Central/8:59 p.m. Mountain/7:59 p.m. Pacific.)
First, Powerball is going to stream the drawing here. However, Powerball’s website has been known to crash before when there are lots of viewers. So it’s a good idea to have some backups ready.
ABC 7 NY has a webpage set up for streaming the Powerball drawings live (along with Mega Millions and the New York Lottery.) This is another good place to start.
You may also be able to catch a live stream at WGN-TV at this link, which includes streams of their newscasts and lottery drawings if aired during the newscast.
You can also try the live stream from WRAL. The webpage says that drawings are shown live on WRAL, but it’s not clear if they mean on TV or on the website too. But it’s worth checking out ad having as a backup if you’re interested.
In the past, WNEP Scranton sometimes airs the drawing live here. The link takes you to a 24/7 stream of WNEP.
Or try Texas Lottery’s live webcast here. But note: this is sometimes delayed by about 12 minutes. It will show every lottery drawing from that night in a row, with the biggest one typically last.
How Much Could You Win Tonight?
Tonight’s Powerball jackpot is estimated to be worth $1.9 billion. If you choose the lump-sum cash value, that’s estimated to be worth $929.1 million. Just remember that both of these numbers are before taxes are calculated, which can decrease the winnings quite a bit.
Yahoo reported that if the jackpot were $1.5 billion, the winner would take a 37% tax bill on a lump sum — which takes out about $277 million in taxes. So they’d end up taking home about $473 million, which is still a lot. However, this is also before state or local taxes are factored in. Yahoo noted that if this amount were put in a 4% APY high-yielding savings account, the interest would be about $18.9 million every year.
However, Yahoo advised against this in its report. They noted that if you took the annuity option (getting paid every year for 30 years), you would get $50 million a year pre-taxes, which is quite a bit more. Your money would come from a conservative annuity earning 4.5% APY, which is higher than a high-yield savings account. With the annuity option, you’d also pay taxes once a year on the $50 million, rather than on the whole lump sum at once.
Yahoo advises assembling a team of advisors, establishing a budget, and investing wisely.
The odds of winning the entire jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338. The overall odds of winning any prize (including the $4 prize for matching just the red Powerball or just the red Powerball and one white ball) are 1 in 24.87.