Lotto fever: $50 million must be won tonight
If one punter scoops the lot tonight, it will be a New Zealand Lotto record
More than two million tickets are expected to be snapped up by Lotto players ahead of tonight’s astronomical $50 million Powerball draw.
And Sandringham man Pierre Philip was among those in line for a ticket, getting one from the Kensington Dairy in Balmoral yesterday.
If a single ticket holder wins tonight, the prize would be the largest in New Zealand history, edging out a Hibiscus Coast couple who won $44m in 2016.
A bog-standard draw with a lower Powerball figure would typically only reach about 500,000 ticket sales. But 1.7 million were sold for Wednesday’s $44m draw and more than two million are expected for tonight’s.
The must-be-won draw was called on Wednesday after the jackpot swelled to $50m, the cap-limit Powerball can reach in New Zealand.
Simply put, the 8 o'clock draw tonight must be won. If there are no First Division winners, the entire jackpot will roll down to the next division and so on.
If there is more than one winner in a division, the total prize will be shared evenly among all of them.
In October, two separate Lotto winners from Auckland split a Powerball jackpot of $38m, taking home $19.1m each.
Two years ago, a record 40 individual ticket holders shared a First Division prize worth $1m.
People without Lotto tickets today who are still keen to buy one are advised to get in early, head of communications and corporate social responsibility Marie Winfield says.
“Whether it’s one lucky winner or more, we’re so excited that we’ll be making more New Zealanders millionaires this week,” Winfield said. “Everyone around the country is dreaming about how they would spend $50m, and with it being a must-be-won draw, the massive prize has to go.”
If players hadn’t yet bought a ticket, it might be worth buying a dip instead of picking your own numbers. Of the previous big Lotto winners, 73 per cent won with a dip ticket instead of selecting their own numbers.
The most commonly selected Lotto numbers, in order of frequency, over the past 32-odd years Lotto had been running were 1, 7, 22, 19, 13 and 18.
Meanwhile, the least commonly drawn numbers were 28, 29, 34, 4, 3 and 11.
The most frequently drawn Powerball number was the number 2, followed by 6, 3, 1, 5, 4, 8, 7, 10, 9.
But the staff at Lotto don’t just rock up and do the draw; there are rigorous security procedures to run through first. At least three people have to be present at the draw to make sure everything is up to scratch: two Lotto NZ representatives and one Audit NZ scrutineer.
Four sets of balls, two each for Lotto and Powerball, are locked in a secure storage unit, as well as the draw machines which also had two each. Two keys are required to unlock the unit, with security guards having to hand them over to one Lotto representative and the scrutineer.
The seals would be checked to confirm there had been no changes since it was closed.
To see which machine and ball sets will be used, one of two old 20c coins are tossed.
Once in the studio, each machine is run through a robust full draw cycle a minimum of four times before the actual draw. In the rare instance of an issue with a machine arising during testing, it would be replaced with the other machine.
It was a similar story in regard to the balls, if one fell to the ground, the entire set would be swapped for the other.
At the completion of the draw, the Audit NZ scrutineer checks and confirms the results have been correctly recorded on the Official Results Certificate.