Big lottery provider change in South Africa

By ralfek –

inside sa lottery outlet, look at cashier hand holding Powerball payslip

From 1st June, 2026, South Africa has a new lottery provider called Sizekhaya, taking over from Ithuba, which had been organizing the lottery for over 10 years.

Changes

The National Lottery logo has been changed. Sizekhaya issued new lottery tickets mainly because the lottery system is completely different from Ithuba's, and some rules of the lottery games were changed.

Lottery game changes:

  • Lotto numbers pool reduced from 58 to 52.
  • Powerball additional number pool reduced from 20 to 16.
  • Full Powerball ticket cost rises from R5 to 10R.
  • Sportstakes are now called Matchplay.
  • You can play using more numbers for a higher ticket price.

Promises

Sizekhaya want to make the lottery a new omnichannel experience for players, who can play on the internet, lottery outlets, and banking apps with data flowing between all these channels.

Sizekhaya is reintroducing live lottery draws on TV. In further time, draws will be provided on the YouTube channel, also.

There is also a promise concerning big jackpots. The overdue jackpot will be distributed to lower winning tiers at the end of the month.

Reality

The takeover was quite harsh and far from perfect. Users are complaining about many issues. Players are unable to withdraw winnings using popular bank apps. The registering form on nationallottery.co.za is unable to verify the citizenship of players. Sizekhaya itself is too slow with publishing lottery game results. Results appearing the next day are unacceptable for most players. What's more, people are unhappy with the Powerball ticket price rise (over 100%!). Very concerning is the quick pick option on the official site, which sometimes wrongly picks duplicate numbers, which is against the game rules.

Some comments to be found on social media:

You had a big winner on Saturday Lotto. No announcement, nothing?

This thing is gonna flop so badly. 100% increase on the Powerball ticket and 10% deduction on payout? Ya'll are more filthy than Ithuba.

Yesterday's daily lotto winners didn't get R230 000 each as the jackpot was R460 000 can you explain the shortfall of 88500?

Source: African Lottery NET: What I Know About the SA National Lottery Transition on 1 June 2026