Australian lottery history will repeat itself next week with next Thursday’s Powerball soaring to a record $100 million jackpot for the second time in less than six months.
The $100 million jackpot is the equal largest prize Powerball has offered in the game’s 23-year history.
The mounting jackpot comes after no players held a division one winning entry in tonight’s Powerball draw, prompting the game to jackpot for the eighth consecutive week.
While no entries scored the division one prize in tonight’s Powerball draw, a total of 2,467,864 prizes worth more than $44.1 million were won in divisions two to nine.
Among these winners, there were 15 division two winners, who each take home a prize of $81,533.30.
The Lott spokesperson Matt Hart said not only did next Thursday’s Powerball jackpot match the Australian lottery record for Powerball’s biggest prize, it also had the potential to smash a new record of its own.
“If one single entry takes home the entire $100 million jackpot next week it would be the biggest Australian lottery prize ever won by a single entry,” he explained.
“The current record is held by a Hervey Bay couple who won $70 million in January 2016. Before their life-changing windfall, the winners confessed to never having won anything more than a chook raffle!
“While we hope that next week is the week these lottery records are broken, it’s hard to know just how high the jackpot will go if the Powerball winning numbers don’t come up for Australian lottery players.”
Mr Hart said with $100 million up for grabs, up to one-in-three Australian adults were expected to have an entry into next week’s Powerball draw.
“It’s the start of 2019 and everyone is dreaming about what they might do with a massive Powerball prize. As a result, we’re expecting queues out the door in lottery outlets across the nation,” he said.
“We encourage customers to not only get in early to purchase their entries, but also register those entries so we can contact them directly after the draw with the life-changing news!”
Australian lottery history books were re-written last year when Powerball jackpotted to a record-breaking $100 million in August. Powerball draw 1161, drawn Thursday 16 August 2018, saw a young Melbourne man and a Sydney dad share the record-breaking prize and took home a life-changing $50 million each.
In 2018, there were 16 Powerball division one winning entries nationally that collectively took home $367 million. During this time, the biggest individual Powerball prize was $60 million, won by a man from Burleigh Heads in November.
The numbers drawn tonight in Powerball draw 1182 on Thursday 10 January 2019 were 3, 10, 7, 28, 34, 24 and 31. The all-important Powerball number was 14.
The $100 million Powerball draw 1183 will take place on Thursday 17 January 2019.
Tickets can be purchased at any licensed lottery outlet, online from thelott.com or via the Lott mobile app.
The Lott’s division one winning tally across all Australian lottery games has now reached 200 so far this financial year.
The sign of Australia’s Official Lotteries, the Lott operates and markets Australia’s leading lottery games customers know and love creating everyday winners, winning every day.
In the 12 months to 30 June 2018, 74 million winners took home a total of $2.7 billion in prize money from their favourite games which include Saturday Lotto, Monday and Wednesday Lotto, Powerball, Oz Lotto, Set for Life, Lucky Lotteries, Keno and Instant Scratch-Its.