Australia could welcome its biggest-ever individual lottery winner this week if just one person takes home Powerball’s entire $150 million jackpot.
The $150 million Powerball draw on Thursday is the third-biggest prize ever offered by an Australian lottery game.
The jackpot has soared to these heights after there were no division one winners during the past six Powerball draws.
With such a mammoth prize on offer, The Lott spokesperson Matt Hart said up to half of Australian adults were expected to have an entry into the draw.
“While Australian lotteries have been operating for more than a century, there have only been five draws that have offered a jackpot of $150 million or more,” he said.
“If just one person takes home this $150 million prize on Thursday night, they’ll make history by becoming the nation’s biggest-ever individual lottery winner.
“In 2019, a Sydney nurse became Australia’s current biggest individual lottery winner when she won more than $107 million. We spoke to her minutes after the winning numbers were drawn – will we be speaking to a new record holder this Thursday night?
“The last time Powerball offered a $150 million prize was in January this year when the peak of sales was at 6.15pm on the day of the draw when 7,455 tickets were sold in a single minute.
He encouraged customers to not only get in early to purchase their entries but also register their entries to a player card or online account so they can contact them directly after the draw with some incredible news.
He also advised ditching “lucky numbers” ahead of the draw as “lucky numbers” tend to be birthdays, meaning you will likely be sharing your prize with others who picked the same “lucky numbers”.
“With any lottery game, we often see more division one winners when the numbers drawn are 31 and under, and that’s because a lot of people do mark their entries with family birth dates and so forth,” Hart said.
“On the other side of that, if there are a couple of numbers above 31, then we don’t see many division one winners because of that same reason. It’s also not uncommon for numbers over 31 to be drawn.”
BY THE NUMBERS
-So far this year, six Powerball division one winning entries have pocketed more than $270 million. There have been three wins each in Queensland and New South Wales.
-In 2023, more than half (11 of 20) of the Powerball division one winning entries were QuickPicks – where the lottery terminal randomly generates your numbers.
-More than half (11 of 20) of the 2023 Powerball division one winning entries were PowerHit entries – an entry unique to Powerball that guarantees the all-important Powerball number you need to win division one.
-While Powerball is a game of chance, and every number has an equal chance of being drawn, there are some numbers we have seen drawn out of the barrel more often than others.
-From the main barrel, where seven winning numbers are drawn from 35, the most frequently drawn numbers are 17, 7, 3 and 9, while the least frequently drawn are 33, 15, 31 and 26.
-From the separate Powerball barrel, where a single Powerball number is drawn from 20, the most frequently drawn Powerball numbers are 2 and 4, while the least frequently drawn Powerball numbers are 14 and 16.