An Ōpōtiki couple were sleepless for two nights after discovering they’d won $12.5 million in Saturday’s Powerball draw.
The couple, who did not want to be named, bought their ticket on the MyLotto app, picking a few lines “based on the numbers that stand out to us at that time” and autofilling the rest.
While lying in bed after the draw, about to go to sleep, the man said he “suddenly had this feeling” that he had to check his ticket.
“I didn’t log in to MyLotto straight away, but looked online and saw Powerball had been won in the Bay of Plenty.
“My partner said, ‘well they definitely look like some of our numbers’ and that’s when we started to get nervous.”
He opened the app, and the couple waited in anticipation to see if they had the lucky ticket.
“That ‘scratch, scratch, scratch’ noise it makes when it’s marking your numbers just kept going.
“We got to six, so I knew we’d won big, but in that split second before the Powerball came up, we didn’t dare believe it would,” he said.
Disbelief set in when the final number matched.
“I sat straight up in bed and shouted: ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’” he said.
“My partner thought I was playing a prank on her – she still doesn’t actually think it’s real. She said she’ll wait to see it in the bank account before she gets too excited.”
The $12.5 million prize was made up of the $12 million Powerball jackpot, and $500,000 from the first division.
The man said the couple felt like they were dreaming.
“Maybe we had actually fallen asleep and none of it was real. We just kept saying to each other… ‘are we going to wake up now?’”
It was safe to say that the couple never ended up going to sleep that night.
“I usually sleep really well, but I couldn’t sleep at all that night, or the night after,” the man said.
Their win has now been safely claimed, and the couple said they would take some time to think about what it meant to them and their families.
“Of course, we want to help our families, but we don’t know what that looks like yet. We still can’t wrap our heads around it – it’s going to take a while to process before we make any decisions,” the man said.
The couple’s win takes the number of new multimillionaire Lotto winners in 2025 to 14.
