Lotto: Seven winners to split whopping $50m jackpot

Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly

The numbers are in for Lotto's $50 million must-be-won draw - and seven people will be splitting the huge prize.

The numbers are 22, 35, 10, 30, 21, 37 and bonus ball number 5.

The Powerball number is 2.

With no Powerball First Division winners, the prize money rolled down to Powerball Second Division, Lotto NZ said. That meant instead of one person pocketing the jackpot, seven winners would instead receive $7.18m.

"It's amazing that Powerball rolled down to Second Division and was shared between seven players - it's fantastic to see more of our lucky players get to experience what it's like to win," Lotto NZ chief executive Jason Delamore said.

"This is going to be life-changing, and not only for the lucky winner themselves, as we know winning big has a huge ripple effect.

"Most of our big winners share their prize with others, including family, friends, communities, and charities. This means that the win makes a huge difference to more than just one person."

Fourteen other players won $71,429 through Lotto First Division and one person took home $600,000 through Strike Four.

Delamere said the big winners should phone Lotto NZ's Customer Services team on 0800 695 6886 "to ensure they receive the support they'll need throughout this life-changing experience".

The locations where the winning tickets were bought would be released on Sunday, Lotto NZ said.

Earlier, Lotto NZ said there would be some changes to how customers could buy and check tickets for the draw.

The Crown-owned entity was expecting to sell about 2 million tickets, and had put in extra measures to cope with high traffic on its online system.

Customers who bought their ticket in the last hour before sales closed at 7.30pm could be placed in a virtual queue, as would those checking their tickets after the draw results were released at 9.15pm.

"To allow enough time for processing the extraordinarily high volume of tickets, the MyLotto site will also open later than usual the next day (Sunday), with Lotto NZ advising MyLotto will open at 10am on Sunday morning," Lotto NZ said in a statement.

And while the winning numbers will be released on Saturday night, the location and the store of the jackpot winner or winners will not be revealed until midday Sunday.

"We would like to thank customers in advance for their patience as we manage what we expect to be exceptional interest in the results of this huge draw," Lucy Fullarton, Lotto NZ head of corporate communications, said.

"With so much excitement around the draw we want to ensure our players can enjoy the anticipation of the big win and have an opportunity to check their individual ticket before they hear in the news where the winning tickets were sold."

It has been four years since Lotto NZ has had a jackpot this high.

Wednesday night's $43m prize was not struck, and Saturday's $50m draw was the highest-equal jackpot in New Zealand's history.

With the prize money so high, more people tended to buy tickets to enter the draw, Fullarton said.

"We know that we've got a proportion of customers that buy tickets regularly, but actually, a much larger proportion only come into the draw at certain times, so when the jackpot gets to $20m, $30m or $40m.

"We do see at these levels a lot of people who would never normally buy a ticket, and don't even think about Lotto, they might see it in the news and think 'oh, I'll pick one up'."