When comparing two Powerball lotteries from USA and Australia, we can observe a number of notable differences, such as odds of winning, different prize structure, size of jackpot main prizes offered to lottery players, different payout system of the winnings, and taxes on the winnnings. Let’s dig a little dipper into those differences between American Powerball lottery and Powerball from Australia.
American Powerball lottery was born much earlier than Australian Powerball. The first American Powerball lottery game took place on 19th of April 1992. Australian Powerball lottery game took place for the first time around 21 years later, exactly on the 1st of March 2013.
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Winning payout systems differences in Powerball lotteries.
American Powerball lottery operator offers two payout options. Annuity option, which means the payment of winning is distributed over a period of 30 years. Second option is one cash payment.
Australian Powerball lottery winners always collect winning in one lump sum payment.
Powerball lottery winnings taxation.
There are no taxes collected from Australian Powerball lottery winners.
American Powerball lottery prizes are taxable.
Different size of main prizes offered by American v.s Australian Powerball lottery.
American Powerball lottery offers much bigger jackpots when comparing with jackpots offered by Australian Powerball lottery.
Jackpots offered by American Powerball lottery starts at $40 million. Temporarily during coronavirus pandemic COVID-19, this has been reduced down to $20 million.
Australian Powerball lottery offers jackpot starting from around $1.000.000 up to $1.500.000 USD. This depends on AUD/USD conversion rates.
We can clearly see that the difference between starting jackpots is quite significant. On some occasions American Powerball lottery offers starting jackpots as much as 40 times bigger than Australian Powerball lottery operator. This is also reflected in all time record jackpots, which we cover in next paragraph.
American Powerball lottery record winnings in comparison with Australia Powerball lottery record winnings.
Until the time of writing this article American Powerball lottery still holds the record of the world’s largest lottery jackpot, which was $1.6 Billion USD, in game on the 13th of January 2016. But it was not the largest single player win in the history of lotteries, because that massive prize was divided between 3 players, where each players won around $530 million USD.
The largest single player win in history of American lottery Powerball was $768 million USD, won on 27th March 2019 by single ticket purchased in Wisconsin, since that was the only winning ticket the winner took the whole prize without the need to share the winnings with other players.
In case of Australian Powerball lottery the biggest main prize win was A$150 million in game on the 19th of September 2019. This winning prize was split equally between 3 lottery players.
Although there are big differences between record winnings, but there are also big differences with odds of winning the main prize.
It is much easier to win main prize in Australian Powerball lottery than in American Powerball lottery.
Better chances of winning the main prize are in Australian Powerball lottery than in American Powerball lottery.
The odds of winning main prize in Australian Powerball lottery are much in favour of lottery player when comparing with odds of winning main prize in American lottery Powerball.
Basically it is more than two times easier to win first prize in Australian Powerball lottery than in USA Powerball lottery.
The odds of winning main prize in American Powerball are 1 in 292 million.
The odds of winning main prize in Australian Powerball lottery are 1 in 134 million.
Different game format.
In Australian Powerball lottery players need to select 7 numbers from the pool of 35 regular balls. Additionally lottery player need to select 1 Powerball number from the pool of 20 extra balls.
In American Powerball lottery players need to select 5 numbers from the pool of 69 regular numbers (white balls). Additionally players need to select 1 Powerball from the pool of 26 extra balls (red balls)
Prize structure.
Both American and Australian Powerball lottery offers 9 tier prize structure. However there are some differences, notably: When playing USA Powerball lottery in order to win 9th tier prize player can match only one number, namely Powerball number, in case of Australian Powerball lottery player needs to match minimum 3 balls (2 regular numbers plus 1 Powerball number)