Overview
- Ticket sales opened in the U.K. on July 21, with hundreds of thousands of lines sold in the first 24 hours and digital buyers in Belfast recording the strongest online take-up.
- The inaugural U.K.‑eligible Powerball drawing took place early on July 23 and produced the numbers 04, 05, 22, 50, 58 and Powerball 01, with no grand‑prize winner so the advertised global jackpot climbed into the high hundreds of millions.
- U.K. play uses separate terms: tickets cost £4 per line, lower‑tier prizes are paid under a U.K. prize structure that adds a fixed £8 'match two' tier, and advertised jackpots are shown post‑tax and paid as 30 annual instalments with no lump‑sum option for U.K. winners.
- Powerball and Allwyn say each U.K. ticket contributes the same amount to the shared jackpot as a U.S. ticket so jackpots should build faster, while U.S. ticket prices and the odds of winning the jackpot remain unchanged; some U.S. players have publicly objected on social media.
- The move brings the National Lottery into a game that began in the U.S. in 1992 and has produced nine‑figure and billion‑dollar prizes in the past, with draws still held from Powerball’s Florida studio on the established schedule.