- Seven winners each received $7.18m due to Powerball Rolldown.
- High online traffic prompted changes to ticket sales and checking.
- Next-day ticket checking to start later at 10am due to volume.
The excitement surrounding New Zealand’s Powerball reached new heights as the $50 million prize went into a Powerball Rolldown. This resulted in seven lucky winners each receiving $7.18 million. Instead of a single winner taking home the entire jackpot, the prize was distributed among multiple winners, as confirmed by Lotto NZ. Related: Southland Celebrates Lotto Wins, Invercargill Misses Out
Tonight’s winning numbers are 22, 35, 10, 30, 21 and 37. Bonus ball 5 and Powerball is lucky number 2.
Each prize is made up of $7,155,649 million from Powerball First and Second Division and $24,392 from Lotto Second Division, making it a total prize of $7,180,041. Due to the expected wait times to check tickets on MyLotto tonight and the late opening of MyLotto in the morning, Lotto NZ will release the locations the winning tickets were sold in tomorrow around 12pm (Sunday 9 June).
To manage the anticipated surge in ticket sales, Lotto NZ implemented several changes. The Crown-owned entity expected to sell around 2 million tickets and put in extra measures to handle the high traffic on its online system.
Customers purchasing tickets in the final hour before sales closed at 7:30pm were placed in a virtual queue, and those checking their tickets after the 9:15pm draw results also encountered a queuing system.
Lotto NZ announced that, due to the high volume of ticket sales, the MyLotto site would open later than usual the next day, starting at 10am on Sunday.
While the winning numbers were released on Saturday night, the location and store where the winning tickets were sold were not disclosed until midday Sunday.
“We would like to thank customers in advance for their patience as we manage what we expect to be exceptional interest in the results of this huge draw,” said Lucy Fullarton, Lotto NZ head of corporate communications.
“With so much excitement around the draw, we want to ensure our players can enjoy the anticipation of the big win and have an opportunity to check their individual ticket before they hear in the news where the winning tickets were sold.”
This jackpot was one of the highest in New Zealand’s history, with the last $50 million draw occurring four years ago. The large prize amount drew many infrequent players to buy tickets.
“We know that we’ve got a proportion of customers that buy tickets regularly, but actually, a much larger proportion only come into the draw at certain times, so when the jackpot gets to $20m, $30m, or $40m,” Fullarton explained. “We do see at these levels a lot of people who would never normally buy a ticket, and don’t even think about Lotto, they might see it in the news and think ‘oh, I’ll pick one up’.”