World’s biggest lottery game to launch in the UK this week – with £1bn jackpot
The National Lottery operator announced that the world’s biggest jackpot game will start in England this week.
Players will be able to buy the National Lottery’s Powerball for £4 per line from Tuesday and compete with their US counterparts for joint jackpots worth billions of dollars paid out over 30 years.
If the Powerball jackpot, currently estimated at $416 million (£311 million), continues to grow leading up to the UK launch, British players will have the chance to win it in Thursday’s opening draw.
This marks the first time the game has operated outside the US, offering UK players unlimited jackpots that start from £12 million and can grow into hundreds of millions or even billions.
The UK game has an extra ‘match two main numbers’ prize tier that is only open to UK players and offers a fixed prize of £8.
The “match five main numbers” tier also offers a fixed prize of £1 million, while all other prize tiers in the UK will vary depending on the balls drawn and the number of winners.
Allwyn managing director Andria Vidler said: “Powerball jackpots can run into the billions, offering breathtaking sums with the potential to transform lives and communities.
“We encourage players to enter when tickets go on sale and will keep our fingers crossed for our first UK winner.”
The National Lottery has carried out the biggest overhaul of its draw-based Lotto game since its launch in 1994; players were given two chances to win for every £2 ticket.
The change, which comes into effect from June 7, is expected to more than double the number of Lotto millionaires from around 140 to 345 a year.
It also follows the recent completion of a major £450 million technology upgrade for the lottery, which involved moving 18 million player registrations and more than three billion historical transactions from old platforms to new ones and transforming the technology used by its retail partners.
Latest figures from Allwyn show total National Lottery sales, including lottery tickets bought in stores, will reach £8.1bn in 2025, up 3.5 per cent on the previous year.
More than £1.7bn was raised for good causes, including health, education, arts, sports heritage and charitable causes, and £967m was raised in taxes.
