Powerball is “jumping the pond,” with the U.S. jackpot lottery set to add players in England, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom beginning this summer, organizers announced Tuesday.
The change will be implemented through an agreement between the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, and Allwyn UK, which operates the U.K.’s National Lottery. The deal still must be approved by a U.K. gambling commission, the organizations said, before Powerball can formally include U.K. ticket buyers.
Matt Strawn, who heads Powerball and is chief executive of the Iowa Lottery, said the lottery is looking for ways to keep the game “culturally and commercially relevant,” and called the expansion “the next natural progression” for the product. Strawn also said the same jackpot amount will be available to players in the U.S. and the U.K., with U.S. payouts made in dollars and U.K. payouts made in pounds.
For U.S. players, Strawn said nothing will change, including the $2 cost of a Powerball ticket and the long odds of winning the jackpot—1 in 292.2 million. He argued that U.K. participation would speed up jackpot growth by enlarging the number of players who compete for the prize in each drawing.
Strawn said players have told the lottery in surveys that they want “faster growing Powerball jackpots,” and he attributed that to a feedback loop in which higher jackpots drive more participation and increased sales. “The more people play, the higher sales grow. The higher sales grow, the higher the jackpots get, the more people play,” Strawn said.
Allwyn UK Chief Executive Andria Vidler said the company’s ambition is “to bring more games, more innovation and more excitement to The UK National Lottery,” and described Powerball’s “transformative jackpots” as a way to generate “life-changing contribution to good causes.” Vidler said the U.K. version will offer the chance at larger jackpots than those available in the country and elsewhere in Europe.
While the jackpot mechanics will align between the U.S. and the U.K., the organizations said the estimated jackpot amounts can differ because of currency conversion and because the U.S. advertises prizes pretax, unlike in the U.K. They also said U.K. jackpot winners will be paid over 30 years, while U.S. winners can choose to take winnings spread out through an annuity or in cash, and “nearly all winners opt for cash.”
Beyond the jackpot prize, organizers said smaller prizes will vary between the two countries. Powerball is already played in 45 U.S. states, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and drawings are held Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. In the game, players select numbers from five white balls numbered 1 to 69 and one number from 1 to 26 on the red Powerball.
The announcement also compared recent top payouts across the two regions. Organizers said the largest Powerball payout was just over $2 billion from a ticket bought in 2022 in California, while EuroMillions paid a biggest prize to a U.K. player of £195 million (about $265 million) in 2022. They said Powerball’s expansion will not change how Mega Millions operates, the other large U.S. lottery game.