Powerball Xs & Os cut its prizes in the very first drawing

Powerball launched a new weekly game this fall, and its first drawing did not pay what the prize chart said.

The game is Powerball Xs & Os, made with the NFL and announced on 27 August 2026. You pay $5, pick eight of the 32 NFL team logos, and eight logos are drawn at random every Sunday at 10 p.m. ET. The results have nothing to do with the games on the field. Sales started on 8 September, the first drawing was on Sunday 13 September, and the launch release listed 24 lottery jurisdictions.

The next day Powerball said the lower-tier prizes for that drawing had been paid on a pari-mutuel basis. In its words, "there were more winning tickets than statistically expected across multiple prize tiers," and with the sales of a first drawing that hit the game's prize liability limits. Nobody matched all eight.

Match	Advertised prize	Paid on 13 September	Winners
7 of 8	$20,000	$500	19
6 of 8	$500	$40	810
5 of 8	$40	$34	7,117
4 of 8	$7	$7	31,423

So a player who hit seven of eight was paid 2.5 percent of the advertised amount, $500 where the chart said $20,000, on a ticket that had beaten odds of 1 in 54,782.81 to get there. It was in the rules. The August prize chart carries the line "Lower-tier prizes may become pari-mutuel in some circumstances," and the September release cites the game rules on liability limits. Nobody broke a promise, strictly. But I'd guess most of the 19 people holding a seven-of-eight ticket never read that line.

Why it happened

The odds on the chart are right for random picks. There are 10,518,300 ways to choose eight teams from 32, and the 1 in 54,782.81 for seven of eight is just that number divided by the 192 ways to hit exactly seven. If players picked at random, there would be about 3,874 four-of-eight winners for every seven-of-eight winner. The first drawing had 31,423 against 19, about 1,654 to one. The top tiers came in far heavier than chance says they should.

My read, and it is only my read, is that football fans don't pick logos at random. They pick their team and the teams they know. The eight drawn that night were the Bears, Cowboys, Packers, Chiefs, Eagles, Steelers, 49ers and Buccaneers, and I'd bet plenty of tickets were built from that list. When the crowd is all on one side, the house has a liability problem. A sportsbook handles it by moving the line or cutting the exposure. A lottery with fixed prizes can't move anything after the draw, so it caps the pot and splits it.

What a player should take from it

Your chance of matching never changes. The draw is random, and the lottery odds are the same whichever eight you choose. What your choice changes is how many people you share with when a cap kicks in. If you play this game, I'd pick the teams nobody else wants. Your favorite team is the one everybody else in your state is picking too.

The September release lists 23 jurisdictions selling the game; Massachusetts, which was on the August list, is not on it. Check your own lottery before you buy, and for the main game, see our Powerball explainer. A $5 ticket is entertainment. Our page on responsible gambling is there if it stops being that.