Powerball tickets go on sale in UK for first time
Powerball tickets have gone on sale in the United Kingdom for the first time, allowing British players to compete for the jackpots offered by the popular U.S. lottery, Qazinform News Agency reports.
Sales opened across the UK at 5:00 am on Tuesday, July 21, marking Powerball’s first international expansion in its 34-year history. British players will now have access to jackpots that have previously exceeded $2 billion.
Tickets cost £4 per line and are available through National Lottery retailers, as well as online and via the National Lottery app. To prepare for the debut, operator Allwyn supplied its 43,500 retail partners with new play slips, instructions and promotional materials.
The rules remain largely familiar to U.S. players. Participants select five numbers from 1 to 69 and one Powerball number from 1 to 26, or leave the choice to the Lucky Dip system.
The first drawing involving UK players will take place in Florida in the early hours of Thursday, July 23. Tickets must be purchased by 11:55 pm on the previous evening. Drawings are held at around 4:00 am UK time every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, meaning entries cannot be bought on the day of the draw.
Powerball jackpots start at approximately £10 million and have no fixed upper limit. The game produced its biggest-ever winner in 2022, when a ticket purchased in California claimed more than $2.04 billion.
UK players will compete for the shared jackpot alongside participants in the United States. The addition of a new player base is expected to make the prize grow faster, while leaving the odds of winning unchanged.
Unlike in the United States, where jackpot figures are advertised before taxes, the UK amount is presented as a post-tax value. British jackpot winners will receive the prize in annual instalments over 30 years rather than as an immediate lump sum.
Allwyn expects Powerball ticket sales to raise approximately £1 billion for UK public projects over the game’s first five years. Since its launch in the U.S. in 1992, Powerball has generated around $38 billion for initiatives including education, scholarships, veterans’ services and public parks.
The company supported the launch with a nationwide campaign across television, cinemas, social media and outdoor advertising. Its new Powerball: What Would You Do? commercial premiered during the FIFA World Cup final on July 19.
Only people aged 18 and over are permitted to participate in National Lottery games.
Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that Powerball’s expansion to the UK was announced in April as part of a partnership between Allwyn UK and the US-based Multi-State Lottery Association.
