Last night’s unstruck jackpot of the standard $4m starting jackpot received a boost of $6m to make up $10m for this weekend’s Must Be Won prize.
Coney said if there were no winners in Powerball Division 1, the must-be-won jackpot would be shared in the next division down where there were winners.
“The great thing about Must Be Won draws is that the prize often gets shared.
“We’ve previously held 13 Must Be Won draws and in eight of those cases the jackpot has been split among multiple winners.”
There will be larger prizes in every division and a $10 million lift to Powerball’s biggest jackpot prize, taking it from $50 million currently – up to a possible $60m.
Players have been warned they will be unable to log into their MyLotto app on Saturday night after the draw, with Lotto NZ needing to make updates to the system.
It’s expected the app would be back up and running on Sunday morning.
The last big winner under the existing format came at the weekend when Gisborne ticket holders found themselves $28.25m richer on Father’s Day
The winning Gisborne ticket was sold at Grant Bros on Gladstone Rd, which has been a Lotto store since the first draw in 1987.