7-Eleven store clerk M Faroqui celebrates with customers after learning the store sold a winning Powerball ticket on Wednesday in Chino Hills, Calif.—AP

Three winning tickets shared a $1.6 billion bonanza in the US Powerball lottery on Wednesday, after millions of people tuned in to see the fate of the world-record jackpot live on TV.

The winning numbers were 4, 8, 19, 27 and 34, with a 10 as the so-called Powerball number. Lottery fever gripped the United States, with people forming long lines outside stores to buy tickets and then frantically checking their $2 slips to see if they had hit the mammoth jackpot. “It’s official! There were 3 jackpot-winning tickets in tonight’s Powerball draw: California, Florida & Tennessee,” California Lottery tweeted. Local television showed swarms of people, many cheering and chanting, descending on the Los Angeles convenience store where the California ticket was sold.

The jackpot, which had stood at $1.5 billion for much of the day, eventually crept up to nearly $1.59 billion, a record in the US lottery industry. The three winners will rake in an eye-watering $528.8 million each, NBC News said, although the taxman will soon come calling. The odds of winning were at least one in 292 million.

There was a windfall too for Balbir Atwal, owner of a 7-Eleven franchise in Chino Hills, a Los Angeles suburb, who will pocket a $1 million bonus for selling a winning ticket. “I didn’t expect this big crowd but my Chino Hills customers love me, and I love them,” he told CNN, grinning broadly. Despite the miniscule chances of hitting the jackpot, shops all over the United States did a roaring trade in frenzied lastminute ticket sales in the final hours before the live raw.

Office workers dashed out between meetings to buy tickets, fantasizing about what they would do with the winnings, and commuters in New York joked about scooping the jackpot to save them from the deep freeze of winter.—AFP