Powerball: Last-minute buying frenzy as $150m jackpot sets scene for lotto history

Newsagencies across Australia are bracing for a last-minute lotto frenzy as players line up to secure their chance to win Thursday’s potentially history-making $150 million jackpot.

About half of Australian adults are expected to buy a ticket in the draw, Australia’s equal third biggest Lotto prize pot after a $200m jackpot in February and a $160m draw in 2022.

If a single division-one winner takes home the lot, they will become Australia’s biggest Lotto winner, seizing the mantle from a Sydney nurse who pocketed $107m in 2019.

Matt Hart, a spokesman for The Lott, which operates and promotes Powerball and other major lotteries, said many Australians historically bought their tickets late, often after they finished work and just hours before the draw.

“A lot of people just buy on the day of the draw, we expect Thursday to be the busiest,” Mr Hart said.

During a buying blitz for a $150m jackpot in January, 7455 tickets were sold in a single minute barely an hour from the close of the draw.

Thursday’s jackpot comes after six draws in which no entry had the winning combination of seven winning numbers and the Powerball number needed to win division one.

The six draws still generated $4.35m for 29 division two winners who were left one number short of the division one windfall.

For those punters chasing tips, The Lott points out that PowerHit entries (also known as Powerpik in WA), which guarantee the winning Powerball number, accounted for more than half of the $552.15m taken home by last year’s 20 division one winners.

The most frequently drawn numbers are 17, 7, 3 and 9, while the least frequently drawn are 33, 15, 31 and 26.

According to research by The Lott and Lotterywest, division one lottery wins created 371 millionaires across Australia last year,