what are the odds of winning the powerball lottery?
<answer> The odds of winning Powerball are 1 in 292 million. <context> Of course, it's pretty long odds to win just one of this week's drawings -- either Saturday night's $356 million Powerball game, or Friday's $382 Mega Millions drawing. Related: How Powerball finds winning tickets. But that doesn't stop people from trying. Americans spent more than $80 billion on lottery tickets last year. That's more than they spend on movies, video games, music, sports tickets and books -- combined. The odds of winning Powerball are 1 in 292 million. The Mega Million odds are slightly better -- only 1 in 259 million. If you buy both tickets, you've doubled your odds of winning, said Ben Auerbach, lead data strategist for Allstate, but they're still pretty close to zero.