News and opinion writer
Wisconsin is the land of cheese, the Packers, and, after last weekend, a few big lottery winners.
While the latest Powerball drawing created literally thousands of winners, both big and small, it was an in-state draw game that delivered the biggest prize.
Read on to learn which games had the biggest payouts and where players bought their lucky tickets.
Power winners
While no Badger State Power Ball player won the $1.3 billion jackpot, 82,631 Wisconsin players did cash in tickets for prizes ranging from $4 to $150,000 from the April 6 drawing.
The Black River 4 Seasons in Black River Falls might be the luckiest convenience store in the state. The retailer sold two Powerball tickets, each worth $150,000, when the 3X Power Play multiplier was included. There's no word on whether the same person bought both tickets or if two different players scored a big payout, but you can definitely expect more players to stop by the 4 Seasons.
Another player won $50,000 from a ticket purchased at a Kwik Trip in New Berlin. All three tickets matched four of the five numbers and the Powerball number of 9, but the New Berlin buyer skipped the Power Play.
Since April 1, there have been six Powerball tickets sold in the state that were worth $50,000 or more.
While Wisconsin has the 20th-largest population in the country, it has actually produced the fourth-most Powerball winners of any state, with 19 players collecting jackpots.
Super win
The weekend's big winner matched all six numbers in the April 7 Supercash! drawing and took home the $350,000 top prize. The lucky player purchased their ticket at the R-Store in Stevens Point. The drawing's winning numbers were 1-3-4-5-7-10. The odds of collecting the jackpot were 1:1,631,312.
Supercash! is an in-state draw game. To win, players pick six numbers between one and thirty-nine. Tickets that match five of the six numbers are worth $500, four of six matching numbers win $30, and getting three of six numbers earns $1.
All of the prizes, except for the jackpot, can be doubled. After the first drawing, there is a second doubler drawing. If the doubler is selected, all non-jackpot wins are multiplied by two. The doubler drawing is free with every ticket purchased.
Drawings are held daily at 9 PM. Each ticket costs $1 and is good for two plays per drawing.
Miss them all
Wisconsin wasn't done winning yet! The weekend saw one more major winner: a player who took home $100,000 playing the draw game All or Nothing. A Kwik Trip in La Crosse sold the winning ticket.
While most draw games involve matching as many of the numbers as possible, All or Nothing rewards players who get all the numbers wrong.
In this game, players must select eleven numbers from one to twenty-two. To win the jackpot, players must pick every number correctly or miss all eleven numbers. Matching ten of eleven numbers or one of eleven wins $500, and correctly picking either nine or two numbers is worth $40.
Drawings are held twice a day at 1:30 and 9:00 PM. Tickets cost two dollars each, and the odds of winning the top prize are 1:705,432.
Seven-figure winners
While there have been plenty of lottery winners, so far, only a few players have collected million-dollar prizes in 2024.
A player in Cumberland took home $1,000,000 from the January 24, 2024, Powerball drawing. The winner correctly matched the game’s first five numbers of 1, 5, 32, 50, and 64, but they just missed the Powerball number of 8.
The ticket was purchased at Cumberland Cenex, and the retailer will receive a $20,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.
Store manager Vernita Craine was highly excited to collect the sales bonus:
Our store has only been open three years. This is our biggest win ever. It's very exciting. The incentive is great for our small store. It's very helpful for us.
One of the year's biggest winners scored $3.5 million playing the in-state exclusive game Megabucks.
The winning numbers for the February 7 draw were 5, 6, 9, 11, 14, and 17. The ticket was purchased at Discount Smokes and Spirits in Oak Creek. Megabucks drawings happen twice a week on Wednesday and Sunday, and each one-dollar ticket contains two plays per drawing.
Yash Patel, the store's owner, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
We're so happy to sell a jackpot winner. Nothing like this has ever happened to us. We've never sold a winning ticket of more than $1,000.
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