Powerball back to base with $3 million up for grabs

There’s $3 million on the line after two lucky ticket holders snapped up the $20 million prize on offer last week.

After last week’s $20 million prize was snapped up, the Powerball jackpot is back at base with $3 million up for grabs in the Thursday night draw.

So far this year, there have been five division one winning entries across Australia that scored more than $206.6 million.

Two of these division one winning entries were from NSW, and one each from Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia.

Last week’s lottery division one winning entries were held by a NSW man and a 12-share syndicate from Victoria. Both scored a $10 million prize.

A lone man and a syndicate snapped up last week’s prize.

A man from Moree, in country NSW, had barely walked through the door on Friday evening after a long day at work when he was shocked into silence by the news he had won $10 million.

“I’m speechless,” he told lottery officials.

“And I’ve only been using these numbers for a few weeks. I swapped them not too long ago to include special family dates.

“When you started speaking, I thought, ‘Oh maybe I’ve won $3000,’ and I would have been happy with that, but $10 million. My goodness, that’s a lot of money.

“My wife actually only said it to me last week, ‘I don’t know why you play that online, no one ever wins online.’

“Well, I guess that’s not quite right now.”

When asked how he would celebrate, he wasn’t being rash with the windfall.

“We’ll have some sushi for dinner and just sit on this for a while.

“It’s important we make some wise decisions for us and our family, but we’re quite comfortable. It’s remarkable because we’re just average working people.

“So, in that sense, I don’t see any reason to stop working yet.

“This is so hard to even comprehend. Thank you so much – this is going to change our lives.”

The man picked lucky numbers related to his family.

A representative from The Lott, Matt Hart, recently revealed that the lottery company had been thinking about shaking things up for some time and that they had finally taken the leap.

Now, they’ve changed the number of balls in the draw which will increase the likelihood of winning but reduce a punter’s chances of scoring bigger prizes.

“Customers have told us they’re looking for bigger prizes and more winners,” Mr Hart said on Monday night.

“There’s going to be two additional balls in the barrel.

“So currently, there are 45 and that will move to 47. The other key change is that there’s going to be an additional supplementary number drawn.”

Lottery punters have a one-in-45,379,620 chance of scoring the division one prize, which starts at a minimum of $2 million.

But with the new balls in the barrel, those chances will go down to one-in-62,891,499.

However, chances of winning the smaller prizes will go up, prompting Oz Lotto to increase the price of a ticket by 10c to recoup their losses and fund the extra prizes.

The changes come into effect from May 17.

In 2021, 14 Powerball division one winners across Australia pocketed more than $550 million in prize money.

Of these wins, seven landed in NSW, four in Queensland, two in Victoria and one in Western Australia.