Four people came close to winning that prize - the biggest since before the level 4 Covid lockdown - but instead split Division One's $1m, collecting $250,000 each.
Before Saturday's draw, Marie Winfield from Lotto said it was the highest jackpot since the $50m "Must Be Won" draw on February 29.
Lotto Powerball jackpotted to the mouth-watering $50m after it wasn't struck that previous Wednesday – when the kitty had reached $42m.
A life-changing $20 million is up for grabs Wednesday night. Photo / File
The $50m figure is the cap-limit Powerball is allowed to reach in New Zealand.
A staggering 2000 tickets were being sold per minute in the hours leading up to the 8pm draw.
By 3.30pm, more than 1.9m tickets had been sold. And Lotto NZ said it expected the number of tickets to top a record-breaking 2.5m mark. The most tickets previously sold was 2.4m.
By 6pm the number of tickets sold had topped the 2.3m mark.
Winfield said that before the nationwide lockdown 75 per cent of sales were from stores and only 25 per cent were through MyLotto or the Lotto NZ App.
Now 39 per cent of sales are purchased online, while 61 per cent are still bought in store.
The biggest single win in Lotto's history was the $44m won via a ticket sold at the Dairy Flat Food Mart in North Auckland in November 2016.
Ahead of the draw Lotto NZ released advice from those lucky winners for future newly minted Kiwi Lotto players.
"First of all, don't have a heart attack! That's the most important thing to remember," laughed the one of the winners.
"But seriously, my best piece of advice is to remember to eat and sleep in the first two weeks. It's the little things like that that are easy to forget in the early days after a big win."
Lotto's big winners
• 85 per cent of big winners kept working, remaining in the same job as before their win • 98 per cent of big winners still regularly buy Lotto tickets; • 73 per cent of big winners surveyed won with a Lucky Dip ticket; • 32 per cent were in their Lotto store when they found out they'd won, 27 per cent checked online and 26 per cent were watching the live Lotto draw; • 19 per cent told only their other half, 31 per cent told their immediate family, 8 per cent told everybody and 5 per cent kept it to themselves; • 23 per cent kept the winning ticket in their purse or wallet, 11 per cent in a drawer, and 5 per cent under their pillow.
