强力球正跳过池塘。
彩票游戏成为百万富翁在美国，今年夏天将扩大到包括英格兰，苏格兰和英国其他地区的球员。
经营彩票游戏的多州彩票协会和经营英国国家彩票的Allwyn UK周二宣布了一项协议。该交易仍需得到英国博彩委员会的批准。
这将标志着美国以外的彩票首次成为强力球头奖的一部分。
“我们一直在寻找方法，以确保我们保持强力球在文化和商业上的相关性，”强力球负责人、爱荷华州彩票首席执行官马特·斯特朗说。"这真的是这样做的下一个自然进程."
大西洋两岸的玩家都可以获得相同的头奖金额，美国玩家以美元支付，英国玩家以英镑支付。
斯特朗说，对于美国的玩家来说，什么都不会改变，包括2美元的强力球彩票和赢得2.922亿分之一头奖的长期赔率。但随着英国玩家购买门票，更大的玩家群体将更快地积累累积奖金。
“玩家在一次又一次的调查中一致告诉我们，他们希望看到的是更快增长的强力球累积奖金，”Strawn说。“毫不奇怪，累积奖金越高，就有越多的人玩这种特定抽奖游戏。玩的人越多，销售额增长越快。销售额增长越高，累积奖金就越高，玩的人就越多。”
对于英国玩家来说，强力球将提供一个比现在英国和欧洲彩票更大的累积奖金的机会。
最大的强力球支出是2022年在加利福尼亚州购买的一张彩票，金额超过20亿美元。欧洲百万彩票(EuroMillions)是一种横跨9个欧洲国家的彩票，也是由Allwyn在英国运营的，它在2022年向英国玩家支付了1.95亿英镑(2.65亿美元)的最高奖金。
“我们的目标是为英国国家彩票带来更多的游戏、更多的创新和更多的兴奋——没有比强力球更令人兴奋的了，它具有变革性的累积奖金和对美好事业的改变人生的贡献，”Allwyn英国首席执行官安德里亚·维德勒在一份声明中说。
虽然累积奖金在每个国家都是一样的，但是由于货币兑换率以及美国公布的税前奖金数额不同，预计的累积奖金数额会有所不同
英国的强力球头奖也将在30年内支付，而在美国，头奖赢家可以选择通过年金或现金的方式在几年内获得奖金——几乎所有赢家都是如此选择现金。
所有玩家都将争夺相同的头奖，但两个国家的小额奖金会有所不同。
强力球在美国45个州以及华盛顿特区、波多黎各和美属维尔京群岛都有比赛。
在游戏中，玩家选择显示在5个白色球上的数字1到69，以及显示在红色强力球上的1到26。抽签将继续举行星期一，周三和周六。
在英国，每年有超过3100万人至少玩一次国家彩票游戏
新协议不会改变美国另一家大型彩票游戏Mega Millions的运营方式。
Powerball going international in effort to build larger jackpots
Powerball is jumping the pond.
The lottery game that hasmade millionairesin 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.
“We're constantly looking for ways to make sure that we're keeping Powerball culturally and commercially relevant,” said Matt Strawn, who heads Powerball and is chief executive of the Iowa Lottery. “And this really is the next natural progression in doing just that.”
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, Strawn said. But with U.K. players buying tickets, a larger player pool will grow jackpots more quickly.
“Players consistently tell us in survey after survey that faster growing Powerball jackpots is what they'd like to see,” Strawn said. “Not surprisingly, the higher the jackpots grow the more people play the game in a particular drawing. The more people play, the higher sales grow. The higher sales grow, the higher the jackpots get, the more people play."
For U.K. players, Powerball will offer a chance at much larger jackpots than are now available at lotteries in the country and Europe.
The largest Powerball payout was just over $2 billion from a ticket bought 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.
“Our ambition is to bring more games, more innovation and more excitement to The UK National Lottery — and it doesn’t get more exciting than Powerball, with its transformative jackpots and life-changing contribution to good causes,” Allwyn UK Chief Executive Andria Vidler said in a statement.
Although jackpots will be the same in each country, estimated jackpot amounts will be different due to currency conversion rates and because the U.S. advertises prize amounts pretax, unlike in the U.K.
U.K. Powerball jackpots also will be paid over 30 years whereas in the U.S. jackpot winners have a choice between taking their winnings spread over years through an annuity or in cash — nearly all winnersopt for cash.
All players will vie for the same jackpot prize, but smaller prizes will be different in the two countries.
Powerball is played in 45 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
In the game, players choose numbers displayed on five white balls numbered 1 to 69 and one number from 1 to 26 on the red Powerball numbered. Drawings will continue to be heldMondays,Wednesdays and Saturdays.
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.
