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The national lottery operator is splitting Powerball and Lotto into two separate brands, with Powerball built around bigger and more frequent jackpots. Kgothatso Mashile, head of marketing at Sizekhaya, set out the plan in October, alongside the return of televised live draws.
Part of that design is a rule Sizekhaya introduced after taking over on 1st June, under which an unwon Powerball jackpot cascades down to the next division after three rollovers. The changes land in a gaming market that has moved onto phones, where a lottery ticket now sits a tap away from online casino games and sports betting.
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Chief operating officer Fundi Sithebe set out the thinking in March, before Sizekhaya took over. She said the operator wanted to tackle "jackpot fatigue" by cascading the jackpot so that wins come more frequently, and that bringing back the live draw was important "to show the transparency".
The first cascade came within a month. With the Powerball Xtra jackpot unclaimed after three consecutive rollovers, the estimated R139m from the 30th June draw rolled down to Division Two instead of carrying forward, and three players each received about R45.7m. Sithebe called it "a landmark moment for the National Lottery".
The second part of the redesign is football. Sizekhaya has piloted MatchPlay, its sport pools game, ahead of a full rollout, and Sithebe has said the operator is now pushing it through some banking apps, putting it on the same phones as online casino games and sports betting.
Pools reward knowing football in and out rather than picking numbers, and sound matchplay 13 predictions rest on what an analyst would weigh: recent form, home advantage, injuries and squad rotation, and how much a fixture matters to each side. In Match Play 13, each board calls 13 fixtures as 1 for a home win, X for a draw or 2 for an away win, and ten correct results earn a prize across four tiers, from ten correct up to all thirteen. Draws run twice a week across midweek and weekend fixtures.
The payout works differently too. Prizes come from a shared pool, so a winning board's return depends on how many other boards land the same results, and an unwon top prize rolls over to the next draw. A weekend of upsets can leave a handful of boards splitting a large sum, while a run of predictable results spreads it thinly.
The Powerball cascade is a clean break from the old model. Under a plain rollover, explained in magayo's guide to how the South African Powerball jackpot behaves, an unclaimed top prize carries forward with no cap, so the headline figure climbs while the odds of hitting it stay the same. A cascade sets a limit on that run and moves the money down to a division with far better odds, turning one rare giant prize into several large ones paid sooner.
All of it follows the change of operator. The previous operator's final draw took place on 29th May, closing a run that began in 2015, and EWN's report on the new national lottery operator set out the switch to Sizekhaya from 1st June. Sizekhaya says it directs 28% of its proceeds to good causes.
The next test is scale. As MatchPlay moves from pilot to full rollout and onto banking apps, more boards will sit in each draw, which changes how the shared pool divides and how often the top tier is hit.
That matters in a market where online casino games and sports betting already sit on the same screen. A cascading Powerball and a twice-weekly football pool give the lottery two ways to pay out more often, and the coming months will show whether football results can become as familiar a reason to play as a big Powerball number.
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