{"id":202193,"date":"2025-12-26T04:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T04:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/202193\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T04:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T04:09:08","slug":"us-lottery-player-wins-second-biggest-powerball-ever-on-christmas-eve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/202193\/","title":{"rendered":"US lottery player wins second-biggest Powerball ever on Christmas Eve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4M4G8U2_image_crop_129904\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" alt=\"No caption\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nA lucky lottery player in the US state of Arkansas has won the US$1.8 billion Powerball prize.<br \/>\nPhoto: Unsplash \/ Sharon McCutcheon\n<\/p>\n<p>A lucky lottery player in the US state of Arkansas has won the US$1.8 billion (NZ$3b) Powerball prize, the second-largest US lottery jackpot ever won, the gambling game&#8217;s organizer said on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With final ticket sales, the Powerball jackpot reached US$1.817 billion, making it the second-largest US lottery jackpot ever won and the largest Powerball prize this year,&#8221; Powerball said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The drawing was held on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n<p>The winner can claim the full amount in 30 annual payments or opt for a one-off cash payout of US$834.9 million before tax.<\/p>\n<p>The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, according to Powerball.<\/p>\n<p>The largest lottery bonanza in history was US$2.04 billion, awarded in 2022 to a person who bought their ticket in California.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lucky lottery player in the US state of Arkansas has won the US$1.8 billion Powerball prize. Photo:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[48,138,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-202193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-current-affairs","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-podcasts","16":"tag-public-radio","17":"tag-radio-new-zealand","18":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}