3 Interesting things you didn’t know about SA Lotteries

A few days or weeks thereafter, you will read that the winner claimed his or her prize. Then the hype is over, and everyone forgets about the millions that were won and they continue to place their bets on the next big prize up for grabs.

Just to explain in short how lucky players are who win the lottery: If your chances of winning the SA PowerBall for e.g, is 1 in 42,375,200, it means that there are 42 million plus different combinations of numbers that you have to choose 5 of between 1 and 50 and one number between 1 and 20. For the SA Lotto your odds are 1 in 20,358,520 which means there are 20 millions plus different combinations for the numbers 1 to 52, that you need to choose 6 of.

We made a list of the past SA Lotto and SA PowerBall first prize winners from 2018 to date. We’ve also noted a few interesting conclusions: the amounts that were won each year and the lotto winning numbers that were most popular during the years as well as which days were the luckiest for the players.

2020 Winners to date

So far there has been 40 draw days for SA PowerBall and SA Lotto. From the table below we can say that the lucky days for the winners were Tuesdays and Saturdays. The number featuring in most draws is the number 45. The total amount paid out for SA PowerBall so far is R249,947,656 and R107,011,252 for the SA Lotto.

2019 South African Winners

In 2019 there were a total of 208 draw days, 105 for PowerBall and 103 for the Lotto. From the table below we have concluded the following: Saturdays and Tuesdays were the days to place your bet on. 70% of the Lotto winning days took place on a Saturday and 78% of the PowerBall winning days took place on a Tuesday.

Overall, 30% of the winners were from the Western Cape in 2019. And a total amount of R1,005,956,484 was paid out as first prizes for the two games. The lucky number most drawn between the winning draws was number 10. The biggest amount won in SA history was also won in February 2019.

2018 South African Lottery Winners

In 2018 there were a total of 208 draw days for the 2 games. From the information below we can see the following: there were 17 winning Lotto days totalling the amount of R447,625,941.00. 53% of the days were on a Wednesday. 11 First prize draws for PowerBall paid out a total amount of R479,590,881.00 and 55% of the days were on a Tuesday. The luckiest number drawn most for both draws was number 14.

From all the information above we can conclude that PowerBall, even with the much lesser chance of winning, pays out much more than the Lotto in South Africa. From a total of 22 draws, PowerBall paid out a total amount of R1,403,511,334 where the amount of R886,620,880 was paid over 32 draws with Lotto. This equals to PowerBall paying out 58,30% more than the Lotto.