Three other people won in the second division, taking home $34,997 each.
The Powerball jackpot surged after Saturday’s draw of $30m went unstruck.
In the build-up to tonight’s draw, the owner of one of New Zealand’s luckiest Lotto stores was betting it could sell another winner.
It has been a year since Whakatāne’s Halfway Store sold a $12m winning ticket and store owner Sophie Sang hoped it could repeat that feat today.
The store had total wins valued at $12,250,000. Its largest prize won was $12m in Powerball, with $250,000 from Lotto First Division.
Lotto NZ said the odds of winning are “exactly the same no matter how or where you buy your ticket”, but the Halfway store backs its lucky reputation.
The shop is emblazoned with emblems of luck - from the leprechaun and four-leaf clover behind the counter to the big “lucky” sign at its entrance.
Sang said the store had been “lucky every year” since it sold its first winning ticket in 1996.
“Our regular customers are too many to count. It doesn’t matter if the prize is $20m or $2m, they come every Wednesday and Saturday.”
Lotto head of communications Lucy Fullarton told the Herald that Lotto would meet with any potential winner “as soon as possible” to provide comprehensive guidance and support for the win.
They will also refer them to the right expertise to set them up “for a great future”.
Fullarton said there were often ripple effects from big wins like the one possible today.
“Winners [share] them with family and often use the money to benefit the wider community,” she said.
The last time somebody walked away with a $33m prize pot was in 2013 when the winning ticket was sold in a shoe repair shop in Ponsonby, Auckland.
In 2021, the second-largest Lotto victory was achieved in the small Waikato town of Pōkeno, when a ticket became worth $42.2m.
This feat was only beaten by the biggest win in New Zealand’s Lotto history, which was achieved in 2016 when an Auckland resident claimed a prize of $44m.
A young Hibiscus Coast couple took home the winnings and said they were looking forward to a low-key Christmas.
“We don’t want to jet off overseas when we have the chance to spend some special times with our family and friends,” the new multi-millionaires said in a statement.
The New Zealand Lotto competitions are not on the scale of competitions elsewhere around the world.
A single mother of three in the United States once took the stage to receive her Lottery prize of a cool US$476m ($772m), while a couple in Northern Ireland won NZ$237m in the EuroMillions contest in 2019.
The largest ever amount won by an individual in a lottery? Look no further than South Carolina, where one lucky ticket holder took home the all-time prize back in 2019.
How much did they win? The New Zealand equivalent of $2.4 billion.
