Any ticket could be the winner

State line sales

They say money can't buy happiness, but I'm willing to try

Kevin Stoerch of Michigan

The Big Game started in 1996 and operates in seven states - Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and Virginia.

Players have been flooding across state lines to buy the $1 lottery tickets, which can only be sold in the participating states.

Ticket sales, which tend to be strongest near state lines where residents of non-lottery states drive to buy tickets, were estimated to have reached $118m in the three days preceding Friday's draw.

Enthusiasm for tickets is such that some New Yorkers even went to New Jersey

At the Pilot Travel Center in Georgia, near the Alabama state line, a queue of 40 ticket buyers stretched out of the door and around the building.

"I'm just playing because it's so high," said Lisa Gray of Alpine, Alabama, who drove 60km (40 miles) to queue up with her four-year-old son.

Retailers - who make five cents on every ticket sold - reported customers buying them up by the hundred.

"They say money can't buy happiness, but I'm willing to try," said Kevin Stoerch of Escanaba, Michigan.

In New Jersey, residents from New York City, who normally try to avoid visiting their less fashionable neighbour, were hurrying across the Hudson River to queue for Big Game tickets.

Instalments

The winner of Friday's jackpot would have had the option of taking their winnings in 26 annual instalments of $8.8m before taxes, or receiving a lump sum of roughly $114m.

Federal and state taxes would have reduced that to roughly $80m.

It was estimated that roughly one-third of the proceeds from the Big Game would be paid back to the various states to fund charity schemes, such as scholarships to send poor students to university.

But gambling addiction experts warned people to guard against enthusiasm turning into compulsion.

An estimated 5% of Americans experience a gambling problem at some time in their lives.