New Zealand Powerball
Powerball is a supplementary game to the main Lotto draw, in which players have the chance to pick and match an additional number in order to increase their Lotto winnings. The First Division Powerball prize can roll over even if the Lotto top prize is won, often rising well into eight figures.
The jackpot can rise as high as NZ$50 million, and on Saturday 29 February 2020 it reached this amount for the first time. Two tickets split the money in the record-breaking draw.
New Zealand Powerball Draw Schedule
New Zealand Powerball draws take place twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday evenings, at the Avalon Studios in Lower Hutt, Wellington. The draws are broadcast live on television on channel TV2.
How to Play and Win New Zealand Powerball
Players can only take part in New Zealand Powerball by playing New Zealand Lotto, which requires them to choose six numbers from a choice of 40. To opt-in to Powerball you pay an additional fee and pick one extra number between 1 and 10.
The minimum Lotto purchase is four lines when choosing your own numbers, but you can also let the computer do the hard work and create Dips of ten, 15 or 20 lines of randomly-generated digits.
To win the Powerball, players must match all six Lotto numbers and the Powerball number in any order. In addition, there are a further six prize tiers which enable winners to gain supplementary prizes by matching as few as three main numbers plus the Powerball.
Strike!
An extra game which can be played independently or alongside the NZ Lotto and the Powerball is called Strike! and costs NZ$1 per line. When playing Strike!, players will predict what the first four numbers drawn from the Lotto drum will be, and the player wins prizes the more accurate their predictions are. The top prize for matching all four numbers correctly and predicting the order in which they are drawn starts at NZ$100,000, but can roll over and reach up to NZ$800,000 if it is not won. After this point, if there are no winners, the top prize will roll down and be shared in winners in the next prize tier.