South Aussies are on a hot streak in the lotto. In the first month of 2023, four division one winners from SA took home a combined $23.87m in prize money.
But it was a single online player from Victoria who became an instant multimillionaire by winning Thursday night’s $40m Powerball jackpot draw.
> Powerball draw 1394 winning numbers:
2, 7, 15, 21, 24, 31, 35 | Powerball 18
In addition to the sole division one winner, there were 1,330,835 winners in divisions two to nine who shared a prize pool of $24.9m. They includes 26 division two winners who each took home $26,183.
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Here’s a quirky lotto fact for you – statistically the most likely division one winner, based on last year’s results, is a middle-aged male with a first name that starts with S. All you Simons, Stuarts and Seans, this is your time!
So far this year, a Gawler shopper won $929,000 on Saturday Lotto on December 21, while the week prior a Goolwa couple won $1.9m and at the start of January an OzLotto player from Findon won $20m.
Last year, 22 Powerball division one winners collectively took home more than $764m in prize money.
The last major Powerball prize was on December 29 when three winners split a $100m jackpot, while a NSW player pocketed $50m on November 24.
They capped an extraordinary surge in major Powerball winners last year. They included two people who each won $63.3m in February, a Canberra man who scored $60.7m in June, a mum from Snowtown in SA who snaffled $40m in September and three winners who shared $53.3m each in the record-breaking $160m jackpot in October.
If you didn’t strike it big don’t be disheartened, the odds of winning the Powerball division one jackpot with a single game are a mere one in 134,490,400.
But this list of Australia’s 10 biggest lotto winners of all time shows that sometimes incredible good fortune does strike.
In 2019, a Sydney nurse became Australia’s current individual lottery record-holder when she won $107,575,649.
Powerball is drawn from two barrels. Seven numbers are drawn from the main barrel with balls numbered 1-35, and one Powerball is drawn from a pool of numbers 1-20.
You can cut your odds by buying a PowerHit entry, which guarantees you get the Powerball number, but that of course costs a lot more for a ticket.
Originally published as Powerball $40m jackpot draw 1394: Get the winning numbers here
