Not one, not two, but three people have earned themselves a share of Lotto's record-breaking Powerball winnings.
As no one was successful in the First Division, the $40 million cash prize was shared between the three Second Division winners - meaning each person earned about $13.3 million each.
The trio lucky enough to get their hands on the cash bought their tickets from Pak N Save Dunedin, Oparau Roadhouse in Te Awamutu and one player from Hamilton bought their ticket on the MyLotto website.
"With the largest jackpot on offer, more players than ever were in to win," said Emilia Mazur, general manager of Corporate Communications at Lotto New Zealand.
"It feels like just about everyone in the country was talking about Powerball and imagining how good it would feel to win, and now these lucky players are about to find out."
The lucky digits for Lotto punters were 3, 18, 27, 29, 33, 37, a Bonus ball of 36 and the all-important Powerball, which was 7.
Those victorious had odds of just one in 3.8 million of taking home the big prize.
Two other punters also got their hands on a large amount of money by winning Strike Four - they duo grabbing themselves $405,792 in earnings.
They bought their successful tickets from Farmcove Superette in Auckland and Waipapa Dairy in Waipapa.
Earlier in the day, one man shelled out a whopping $10,000 on tickets, though it's not yet clear if he has been victorious. It is likely he hasn't.
Sales for tickets on Saturday were through the roof, with people buying at a rate of more than 33 tickets a second at one point in the day.
"This is the biggest jackpot New Zealand has ever seen and it looks like we're breaking all of our previous sales records," said chief executive of Lotto NZ Wayne Pickup.
"More people are playing than normally would. We're selling five times as many tickets than we would on a normal Saturday."
Mr Pickup said it was shaping up to be "a record-breaking week" for sales, with over 2000 tickets bought by punters throughout the country each minute.
Newshub.
