don’t otherwise play often will come out and buy tickets when it’s a billion dollars like this.”

If a California State Lottery player won the estimated jackpot, it would be the largest Mega Millions prize ever claimed in the Golden State, according to a news release.

“We actually haven’t seen a billion dollar jackpot in quite some time in California; nobody has ever won a Mega Millions jackpot this high,” Becker said. “If somebody here hits the big one tonight, or if it keeps rolling and somebody in California hits it later, then it would be certainly a record for us.”

Across Southern California, people got up early to get their lottery tickets. The Bluebird Liquor Store, in Hawthorne, had a line outside its door of about 40 people on the rainy Friday morning. People started lining up at around 5 a.m., two hours before the store opened, said Bluebird employee Maggie Juran.

Folks tend to flock to Bluebird to buy lottery tickets because it has a reputation of being a lucky store. It has previously sold multiple winning Powerball and Mega Millions tickets.

Hawthorne resident Javier Gonzalez said he always goes to Bluebird because “it’s just a place of luck.”

Digital lottery signs in convenience store windows in Orange County, meanwhile, showed triple nines for how much the Mega Millions lottery was at.

At a 7-Eleven convenience store in Costa Mesa, a manager said they had seen more customers than usual coming into purchase Mega Millions lottery tickets. It usually gets even busier the closer it gets to draw time, he said.

The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are not great, to say the least — at about 1 in 302,575,350. The odds of winning any Mega Millions prize are 1 in 24, according to lottery officials.

Mega Millions tickets are $2 a piece, and for every ticket sold in California, about 80 cents goes to support public education, Becker said.

“When jackpots get this high, and sales continue to grow strong and more people play, public education is already winning,” she said. “From sales in California related to this jackpot tonight, which has been rolling for over three months now, the California Lottery has already raised $78.8 million estimated for public schools.”

There has never been a Mega Millions jackpot this high in the month of December, lottery officials said; many were expecting a winner on Christmas Eve. But instead of a Christmas miracle — one lucky player may have gotten their new year started in the best way imaginable.

“Most people would love to bring in the new year with an extra billion dollars,” Becker said. “We’ll see if it rolls over tonight and keeps going for New Year’s Eve, which would be the last draw of 2024 or if we take this into 2025, we’ll find out.”

The Mega Millions jackpot results were set to be posted online after the drawing on Friday evening.

Staff writer Michael Slaten and freelance photographer Chuck Bennett contributed to this report.