Gisborne man wins $28.5m Powerball after playing same lucky number 7 for years

A man from Gisborne walked into Sunday morning with no idea his life was about to change. He was at a family member's house, doing ordinary things, when someone mentioned in passing that a ticket sold at Grant Bros Homeware & Gifts had won $28 million in Saturday night's Powerball draw. He thought nothing of it—good luck to whoever held that ticket. Then he paused. "Well, if the Powerball was number 7," he said aloud, "we might be in the running."

He had played the same ticket for years, always with Powerball 7. The number meant something to him, enough that he never deviated from it. One of his family members sprinted for their phone to check the draw results. When they confirmed it—Powerball 7—the quiet morning erupted. He pulled out his ticket. As they read the numbers aloud, he finished the sequence before they could: "31 and 34." Everyone screamed. Everyone hugged. He would remember that moment for the rest of his life.

The ticket, purchased at the Gisborne homeware store, had won $28 million in Powerball first division and an additional $250,000 in Lotto first division. The man had been a regular player, the kind who buys the same ticket draw after draw, never changing his approach. Consistency had paid off in the most improbable way.

What made the win even more extraordinary was the timing. He discovered it on Father's Day. Once the initial shock had settled, he gathered the rest of his family to tell them. He recounted the story of that morning—the casual mention, the sudden realization, the sprint for the phone—and then delivered the punchline: "Well anyway, twenty-eight million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars later." Watching their faces as the news landed was, he said, very special. To share that moment with his whole family on that particular day made it something he knew he would carry with him always.

When he spoke to Lotto NZ after claiming the prize, he was measured and thoughtful. He said he was taking time to let the reality sink in before making any major decisions. The money, he explained, put him in a position to do something he had always wanted: look after his family. "To know that they'll be looked after, that they will be set up for the future no matter what, means more than anything," he said. The gratitude in that statement was genuine. He had won a lottery jackpot, yes, but what he kept returning to was not the size of the prize but what it meant for the people he loved.

The win arrives as New Zealand's Powerball game enters its final chapter. The next draw, scheduled for tomorrow night, will be the last under the current format—a must-be-won draw where the entire $10 million jackpot will roll down to the next division if no one claims Powerball first division. Starting Sunday, tickets for a new 14-ball Powerball game will go on sale, with the first draw under the new rules taking place on Wednesday. For this Gisborne man, the old game has already given him everything he needed.