Powerball jackpots going international to include players in the United Kingdom

Powerball is jumping the pond.

The lottery game that has made millionaires across the United States will expand this summer to include players in England, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom.

An agreement was announced Tuesday between the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs the lottery game, and Allwyn UK, which operates the U.K.'s National Lottery. The deal still must be approved by a U.K. gambling commission.

It will mark the first time a lottery outside the United States will contribute to the Powerball jackpot.

The same jackpot amount will be available to players on both sides of the Atlantic with U.S. payouts in dollars and those in the U.K. in pounds.

For players in the U.S., nothing changes, including the $2 cost of a Powerball ticket and the long odds of winning the jackpot of 1 in 292.2 million. But with U.K. players buying tickets, a larger player pool will grow jackpots more quickly.

Powerball will offer a chance at much larger jackpots than are now available at lotteries in the U.K. and Europe.

The largest Powerball payout was just over $2 billion in 2022 in California. EuroMillions, a lottery offered across nine European countries and also operated in the U.K. by Allwyn, paid the biggest prize to a U.K. player of £195 million ($265 million) in 2022.

More than 31 million people play at least one National Lottery game each year across the U.K.

The new agreement won’t change how Mega Millions, the other large U.S. lottery game, operates.


(AP Photo George Walker IV)