Little Rock retailers reported a busy day Monday selling Powerball lottery tickets for the $1.6 billion jackpot.

And since no winning ticket emerged late Monday night after the lottery numbers were picked, they may be able to look forward to another busy day on Wednesday.

The numbers chosen Monday night were 3, 18, 36, 41 and 54, and the Powerball number was 7. According to Powerball, the odds of winning the jackpot prize were 1 in 292.2 million.

By 11 p.m., lottery authorities had not announced if a winning ticket had been sold.

The Powerball jackpot was last won on Sept. 6, when two tickets sold in Missouri and Texas split a jackpot worth nearly $1.8 billion.

The next drawing will be held Wednesday at 9:59 p.m.

Retailers in Little Rock and North Little Rock reported robust sales on Monday as customers, enthused by the huge jackpot, went on a buying spree. Mashawana Williams, working the cash register at an Exxon convenience store and gas station on Cantrell Road at North Mississippi Avenue in Little Rock, said she had a steady flow of customers buying Powerball tickets during the day.

“Sales are crazy, just crazy,” Williams said, “especially today. There’s been people in and out all day buying tickets, multiple tickets, I’m surprised my printer hasn’t run out of paper.”

Williams said large jackpots spur a large increase in sales.

“When it hits a billion, people get really excited,” she said.

One of those customers Monday was Ben Fells of Little Rock, who bought a Powerball ticket with the Power Play multiplier in hopes of hitting the big prize. Fells, who said he won a $250,000 prize five years ago, said his first move if he wins will be to “thank God, that will be the first thing I’ll do.”

“The second thing I’ll do is keep myself humble,” he said. “I won’t tell anybody.”

After that, he said he would buy a house and then start a business.

“The main thing I want to do is get a food truck,” Fells said. “I’d get my menu down, get my recipes in line and get my business going.

“Of course I want to help my mom,” he continued. “Then I’ll get a truck, get my business set up, take care of my mom and take my kids on vacation, to Disneyland.”

Business on Monday was brisk at The Beverage House on West 65th Street in Little Rock, according to the manager, Ayan Mandani.

“Usually, my customers for the lottery are elderly,” Mandani said Monday afternoon. “Lately, though, it’s just been every single person coming through buying liquor their last three dollars and saying, ‘let’s buy a ticket.'”

Mandani said combining lottery sales with liquor sales was a good move for him.

“On Saturdays, we’ll have people for two hours just scratching off tickets or buying lottery straight out,” he said.

The larger jackpots, he said, have resulted in an increase to his business.

“I notice a lot more younger customers playing,” he said. “People will normally buy a scratch-off with their lottery tickets.”

Scott Hardin, a spokesman with Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, said December has been “an extremely strong month for sales,” with $5,875,487 in sales from Dec. 1 to Dec. 21. He said for the same period last year, Powerball sales totaled $1,171,350.

“This 400% increase is a great example of the power of $1 billion-plus jackpots and the impact they have on sales,” Hardin said. “The state is averaging 280,000 Powerball tickets sold daily in December versus 55,700 in the same period last year. It’s certainly a strong way for the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery to close the calendar year.”

Over the past six months, Hardin said, Arkansas’ approximately 2,000 Lottery retailers have averaged selling 43,000 Powerball tickets a day.

“You have a lot of players who, once the jackpot hits $1 billion, they start really paying attention,” he said.

Hardin said the largest jackpot winner to date in Arkansas was in 2017 when a Mega Millions ticket worth $177 million was sold.

He said legislation passed in 2021 allows lottery winners of more than $500,000 to remain anonymous initially, but said names of winners do become public after three years.

“If an Arkansan wins tonight,” Hardin said, “that individual can take three years to work closely with an accountant and attorney before the world learns they won more than $1 billion.”

To date, the top five Powerball jackpot payouts have been:

$2.04 billion — Won on Nov. 7, 2022, by a single ticket sold in Altadena, Calif. The winner, Edwin Castro, opted for a lump-sum payment of $997.6 million.

$1.787 billion — Won on Sept. 6, 2025, by two tickets that split the prize, sold in Missouri and Texas.

$1.765 billion — A single winning ticket for this jackpot was sold in Frazier Park, Calif., for the drawing on Oct. 11, 2023. The winner was represented by Theodorus Struyck.

$1.586 billion — This jackpot was split among three winning tickets in California, Florida, and Tennessee on Jan. 13, 2016. It was the first lottery jackpot in the U.S. to exceed $1 billion.

$1.326 billion — A single ticket sold in Portland, Ore., won this prize on April 6, 2024. The winner was Cheng Saephan, who had been undergoing chemotherapy.

Antonio Taylor pulls a Powerball ticket off a printer for a customer on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, at the D&J Mini Mart in North Little Rock.
(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Thomas Metthe)