So you've won the $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot. Who should you call? What should you do with the ticket to keep it safe? How can you avoid the mistakes of other big winners? Financial planner Steve Lewit joins Lunch Break with tips to keep your new-found windfall from disappearing. Photo: AP
Customers wait in line to buy Powerball lottery tickets. A lottery official says the estimated Powerball jackpot remains over a billion which could rocket to more than $US2 billion if not won. Picture: Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo
A WEBSITE giving Australian punters their only chance to enter the world-record US Powerball jackpot has crashed in the online stampede to buy a ticket.
Northern Territory gambling outfit Lottoland opened for business less than a month ago, allowing Australian residents, for the first time, to enter international lottery draws.
With the $US1.5 billion ($2.15 billion) Powerball jackpot to be drawn in America at 10.59pm EST tonight (2.59pm Australian Eastern Standard Time today) a mad scramble of more than 107,000 Australian punters caused the site to crash on Wednesday afternoon.
“We only got our licence on Christmas Eve and figuratively only opened the doors a week ago,” Lottoland Managing Director Luke Brill told WA Today.
“This has blown all our expectations out of the window.”
“We’re just hoping someone from Australia wins it,” he said.
Previously, gambling laws have meant only a resident in the lotto draw’s country could enter the cash grab, and had to purchase their ticket from a registered outlet in that country.
But since Gibraltar-based Lottoland was awarded a five-year license by the Northern Territory Racing Commission to open online gambling in international lotteries, we could have a new Aussie billionaire by the end of the day.
However, any Australian winners will be charged tax on the prize as an American citizen would. “If you were to win $1.3 billion in the US you would receive $US880 million after tax,” Mr Brill said.
A ticket in the eye-watering Powerball draw will set Australians back about $14, compared to $2 in the US.
Scenes like this outside a California liquor store have been seen all across the US ahead of the record lottery draw. Picture: Damian Dovarganes/AP PhotoSource:AP
While millions of tickets have already been sold, if there is no winner, the prize would soar on Saturday to at least $US2 billion ($2.87 billion) with a cash value of $US1.24 billion ($1.78 billion), the New York Post reports.
Lotto fever and strong ticket sales in the historical Powerball draw means chances of that are slimming.
Despite facing insurmountable odds, Kelly Cripe of the Texas Lottery Commission says players have already gobbled 85.8 per cent of the 292 million possible number combinations.
On Tuesday, national sales totalled $US326,581,830.
“We continued to see very strong sales throughout the day on Tuesday and expect to see the same today,” said Gary Grief, chair of the Powerball game and executive director of the Texas Lottery.
“Sales for this jackpot roll alone have now generated more than $1 billion for the important causes supported by lotteries across the country including public education, scholarships, the environment, veterans programs and senior citizens.”
Wednesday night’s jackpot started at $US40 million on November 7, 2015, and is the result of 20 drawings with no jackpot winner.
The chances of winning today’s draw are sitting at 1 in 292.2 million, but if the all but impossible did happen, the winner can choose to be paid the full jackpot in annual instalments for 29 years or take $929.9 million as a one-off payment.
Lottoland’s Australian website crashed yesterday as more than 100,000 Aussies rushed for their chance to buy a ticket.Source:Supplied
Lottery executives say ticket sales have reached record levels in the US.
“Sales are doing exponentially more than we’ve ever done before,” Gary Grief, chair of the Powerball game group, told AFP on Tuesday.
“I’m hearing anecdotally and through news outlets, millions of people who have never played Powerball before are indeed purchasing a ticket.”
Six US states have banned the lottery. Religious beliefs have posed a barrier in Alabama, Mississippi and Utah. Alaska has been more concerned that a lottery wouldn’t pay off in such a sparsely populated state. In Hawaii, lawmakers have proposed lottery measures, but the idea always fails. And in Nevada, the lottery snub is largely a nod to the state’s casinos, which have no interest in the competition.
Mr Grief said some retailers scoring the biggest sales were in US states bordering the handful that do not participate in the game, he said.
“People are flocking over from those states to stand in line and buy lottery tickets.
“You do not have to be a citizen of the US — people are coming from Mexico and Canada to purchase tickets.”
But he sounded a note of caution.
“We want people to play responsibly. This is not a game to put your life savings on, your retirement on. A big part of the fun is putting down your $2 and then dreaming.”
Speculation has already begun about who might win.
“The winner is going to be somebody in the country, from a place we’ve never heard of,” said J. Jay Backus, a New York bus driver, who is not getting his hopes up.
“The ones who win are always the elderly or the rich people.”
Roughly 95 per cent of US Powerball tickets are computer-generated quick picks, so people’s favourite numbers aren’t really a factor. Officials don’t track which numbers are most popular because so many are randomly generated.
Other countries offer large jackpots too. Spain’s massively popular Christmas lottery, known as “El Gordo,” is ranked as the world’s richest, though it doles out a single jackpot among millions of prizes, instead of one large jackpot like the Powerball. El Gordo last month showered 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) across the country.
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