Powerball will jackpot to $80 million, equal biggest lotto prize this year

Powerball has soared to a massive $80 million after no-one picked the winning numbers, the equal biggest jackpot offered so far this year.

Powerball has soared to a massive $80 million for next Thursday’s draw (draw 1317 on 12 August 2021) - the equal biggest Australian lottery jackpot offered so far this year.

The mammoth jackpot comes after no players held the winning numbers and all-important Powerball number needed to score division one in tonight’s draw, sending the jackpot higher for next week.

The winning numbers for Thursday’s draw were 16, 25, 12, 7, 11, 10, 21 and the Powerball was 18.

So far this year, Powerball has created 18 multi-millionaires with more than $339.7 million in combined prize money.

Nine of those were winners who scored a division one prize.

NSW players have had the most Powerball success in 2021, holding six division one winning entries, while Queensland players hogged the remaining three.

The $60 jackpot is the second largest jackpot that has been up for grabs all year.

In April last year, two lucky punters nabbed a $80 million prize between them.

Best of all, lottery officials believe they can help entrants pick the winning numbers, after watching a trend of “hot” and “cold” numbers over a number of years.

RELATED: Names and ages most likely to win lotto

One-in-six Australians have purchased a ticket in the hopes of scoring the windfall.

RELATED: Mum still working years after $107m win

The Lott spokesperson Matt Hart said “While Powerball is a game of chance, and every number has an equal chance of being drawn, some numbers have been drawn more often than others.”

From Powerball’s main barrel, where seven winning numbers are drawn from 35, the ‘hot’ number is 17, having been drawn 49 times during the past three years.

Seven also ranked highly, being drawn 43 times in that same amount of time.

However, other numbers have barely been pulled out of the pot.

These “cold” numbers are 34, which has only been picked 24 times - so half nearly as much as the lucky number 49.

Fifteen also didn’t rank highly, only being drawn 25 times in the last several years.

For the separate Powerball barrel, where a single Powerball number between one and 20 is drawn, there are two numbers that are standouts since 2018.

The number 19 has been drawn 16 times while three has been chosen 13 times.

In contrast, 18, 16 and 8 haven’t been too lucky.

Those numbers have only been drawn four, five and five times respectively.

The winner will be announced on Thursday at 8.30pm.

April’s $80 million prize remains the largest lottery draw of 2021 so far.

However, Mr Hart pointed out: “This is the second time we’ve seen a $60 million Powerball draw this year.

“The first one was held just last month, and, on that occasion, the massive jackpot was won by 10 members of a Townsville syndicate who scored $6 million each.”

A staggering number of Aussies have nabbed a ticket ahead of the draw.

“As you can imagine, a prize of this size attracts a lot of interest so we’re expecting up to one-in-six Aussie adults to have an entry,” Mr Hart said.

“I’ll be standing by to reach out to any division one winners immediately after the draw on Thursday night so make sure you register your entry to a player card or online account.”

In 2020, more than 111.6 million winners took home more than $3.33 billion in prize money.