Ben Affleck and Jeopardy! champion Jamie Ding won the $1 million grand prize on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire's Wednesday episode, correctly answering a Thanksgiving-turkey trivia question to send the money to Affleck's charity.
TL;DR
- Affleck and Ding answered the $1 million question correctly on the Wednesday, July 29 episode.
- The prize goes to Affleck's nonprofit, the Eastern Congo Initiative.
- The win comes almost exactly one year after Matt Damon and Ken Jennings took the same top prize.
- UK viewers have no legal broadcast route to the show and must use a VPN with a US Hulu subscription to watch.
How the million-dollar question played out
Affleck and Ding correctly answered the 15th and final question to win the $1 million grand prize. According to Just Jared, the question asked which name had never belonged to a presidentially pardoned Thanksgiving turkey, with four joke-name options to choose from.
Affleck's reaction on seeing the options was blunt. "You must be kidding me," he said, before the pair briefly discussed using a lifeline.
Give Me My Remote reports the duo turned to their Ask-the-Host lifeline, and host Jimmy Kimmel admitted he had a guess based on his own experience. They ultimately locked in "Spaghetti & Meatball" and won.
Money goes to Affleck's Congo charity
The prize money is headed to a cause close to Affleck's own advocacy work. Affleck's nonprofit Eastern Congo Initiative was the real winner during the two-part finale of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, according to Deadline.
Earlier in the season, Affleck explained the group's mission on-air, describing a region that has been "severely impacted by a very traumatic war," according to AOL.
A trivia champion earns his stripes
Ding wasn't a random celebrity plus-one. Ding won 31 consecutive games on Jeopardy! earlier this year, delivering the fifth-longest winning streak in the show's history, and in one game he responded to 45 clues correctly, tying a record set by host Ken Jennings during his 2004 streak. By the time his run ended in April, Ding had earned more than $880,000 ā one win short of tying James Holzhauer's historic 2019 record.
On set, Ding was candid about the pressure of a new format. "Your ignorance is laid bare for the world to see," he said, matter-of-factly ā to which Affleck quipped, "That's a nice way to think about it."
Following in Matt Damon's footsteps
The win echoes a very similar celebrity moment from last summer. Exactly one year before Affleck's win, his longtime friend Matt Damon also won Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, appearing with his own Jeopardy! champion partner, Ken Jennings, on July 30, 2025.
Damon has been in the news for other reasons this summer, and the two actors' back-to-back charity wins have become something of a running theme for Kimmel's revival. According to Variety, Affleck and Ding are the fifth celebrity pair to win the top prize since Kimmel's tenure began in 2020, following David Chang, Ike and Alan Barinholtz, Damon and Jennings, and Oscar NuƱez and Kate Flannery. Kimmel told the outlet he wasn't sure Affleck knew he'd been paired with a trivia champion, adding the actor "seemed surprised and delighted" once he found out.
UK fact: no legal way to watch yet
There's no UK broadcast deal in place for this celebrity revival. According to Reelgood, UK viewers currently need a VPN connected to a US server and a Hulu subscription to stream the season, since the US format airs on ABC with next-day streaming on Hulu.
Stat card
| Detail | Figure |
| Grand prize | $1,000,000 |
| Source: Variety | |
| Ding's Jeopardy! earnings | $880,000+ |
| Source: Yahoo/TVLine |
Reported from publicly available interviews and verified press sources. Last reviewed July 30, 2026.
