Powerball Lottery Tickets
The USA’s Powerball lottery is one of the biggest international lotteries out there, with a massive jackpot prize that can often be into the hundreds of millions of dollars! These lottery tickets are available to buy in 45 US states, as well as Washington DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. You can also purchase Powerball tickets online if you are an international player.
How to get Powerball Tickets
Powerball lottery tickets are available to buy online until shortly before the prize draws, which are held every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, shortly before 10:59 pm ET. All you have to do is choose five numbers between 1 and 69 on your lottery ticket, as well as one Powerball number from a pool of 26 . You can select your own numbers to play or leave it to chance by opting for a random Quick Pick selection.
Opting in to the Power Play gives you the opportunity to increase your prize money by up to 10x its original value. It costs an additional $1 per play; to add it to your ticket, just mark the Power Play box on your playslip.
A Power Play multiplier is randomly selected on the night of each Powerball draw, and players who added Power Play to their ticket will see their prize money multiplied by that amount. The possible multipliers are 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, or 10x, although the 10x multiplier is only in play when the advertised jackpot is $150 million or less.
The jackpot is excluded from Power Play, so does not increase, and the second prize of $1 million can only be multiplied by a maximum of x2, regardless of which Power Play multiplier is selected.
Winning Tickets
The Powerball jackpot always resets to $20 million after it is won, and then it rolls over and increases in value until there is a winner. There is no upper limit for the jackpot prize, which often results in some incredible wins for players!
Prizes are won depending on how many numbers you match on your Powerball ticket to the winning numbers in the draw you entered. Matching all five numbers and the Powerball will win you the jackpot, while matching fewer numbers will result in you winning a smaller prize. In total, there are nine prize level tiers for players to be able to win.
It is possible for multiple winners to share the jackpot prize, but all other prizes are fixed amounts. These prizes range from $4 for matching just the Powerball, up to $1 million for matching the five main numbers.
Powerball jackpots are paid out as an annuity of 30 payments over 29 years, with the payments increasing by 5% annually , or as a single lump sum, which is a lower amount than the annuitized jackpot, but is paid out straight away. It is completely the winner’s choice as to which payout option they choose.