Punching above weight
Lotto ticket-holders in Southland may not have won the big prize of $20 million — no-one did — but a very tidy second prize has headed south: more than $150,000.
A total of 28 Lotto players had luck on their side on Saturday night, each winning $13,779 in second division in the Lotto draw.
Of those 28, 11 went to Southland tickets with 10 Southland MyLotto winners. The other winning second division winner to be sold in Southland was sold at Whitcoulls in Invercargill. MyLotto is an online sales channel to buy tickets.
Auckland, which has almost 20 times the population of Southland, claimed five MyLotto winners.
So Southland beat the odds.
Who the ticket holders or holder of the 10 MyLotto winning lines are was a mystery late yesterday as Lotto and others remained in the dark.
A Lotto spokeswoman could also not confirm whether the MyLotto winner was from 10 separate people or if it was won by one person playing the same 10 lines.
Winning a second division prize — five numbers and bonus ball — has odds of one in 639,730.
If one person played the same 10 lines, with Powerball numbers from one to 10, they are in for a good night.
They would win 10 times, one of those lines also winning Powerball.
All up the lucky ticket holder would have won just over $150,000.
If it was 10 different people — which appears unlikely — they would have won $13,779 each, one getting the bonus of having the Powerball number bring their prize above $25,000.
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