Lucky ticket holder comes forward to claim £177m EuroMillions jackpot that would make them richer than Harry Styles
28 November 2024, 13:58 | Updated: 28 November 2024, 14:01
A lucky ticket holder has come forward to claim this week’s £177m EuroMillions jackpot, making them the third biggest winner of all time.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
The ticket-holder is the nineteenth UK winner of a prize worth over £100M and is the fourth EuroMillions UK jackpot winner of 2024 so far, operator Allwyn said.
The claim will now be validated before the prize can be paid out.
Once validated and paid out, the ticket holder can decide whether they want to go public.
It will not be made clear whether the winner is an individual or syndicate winner, or where the ticket was purchased, unless the ticket-holder decides to go public.
If the winner is an individual - rather than a syndicate splitting the prize - he or she will immediately become richer than musicians Harry Styles and Adele who featured on this year's Sunday Times Rich List with fortunes of £175m and £170m respectively.
Andy Carter, Senior Winners’ Advisor at Allwyn, operator of The National Lottery, said, “We are delighted that we have received a claim and will now ensure the ticket-holder gets all the support they need.
"This is a truly amazing win, and we will focus on guiding them through the process and helping them to start to enjoy their life-changing win.
“The team here has huge experience of guiding all of our lucky National Lottery winners through the first steps in their journey of embracing their win.”
The biggest UK EuroMillions jackpot win of all time was an anonymous ticket-holder who banked £195,707,000 in July 2022.
Joe and Jess Thwaite from Gloucester hold second place on the list, and are the biggest-ever publicity winners with a £184,262,899.10 jackpot win in the EuroMillions draw on 10 May 2022.
The winning main EuroMillions numbers in the £177m draw were 04, 19, 23, 35, 37 and the winning EuroMillions Lucky Star numbers were 04 and 08.
One lucky couple went public with their enormous £61 million EuroMillions win in February.
Richard and Debbie Nuttall, both 54, from Lancashire, were named as the winners of a EuroMillions jackpot earlier this year.
They won a £61,708,231 share of the £123 million jackpot prize.
They said the win, which happened while they were on holiday in Fuerteventura celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, felt "surreal".
When they first received the email, they thought it may be a scam so asked their daughter to check it in the UK.
The pair are now richer than artists including Dua Lipa and Stormzy and are 29th on The National Lottery Rich List.
Speaking at Mitton Hall Hotel in Clitheroe, Mr Nuttall said earlier this year: "'It was the second day of our holiday and I had got up early to finish off a bit of work. I noticed the email from The National Lottery stating that there was 'exciting news about your ticket'."
He said he opened the email to find what he thought was a £2.60 win in his account.
His wife's reaction was: "Woo hoo, we can get a bacon butty with that."
But it soon hit that a much bigger win was waiting for him after he had a second email asking for him to check his account again.
"I looked and it said 'you've won £61,708,231', ring this number."
He continued: "We just couldn't make sense of it. My first thought was it must be a scam or there was some mix up. I know it sounds crazy but we couldn't think straight.
"I tried calling The National Lottery's number but my mobile phone signal was poor and the call just kept dropping. So I WhatsApped the family chat group asking for one of our daughters to call us urgently.
"My youngest came back quickly and we asked her to log into our National Lottery account from the UK and double-check.
"She put in my details and then just kept repeating 'oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!!' It must be real, this was the official National Lottery website we were all looking at."
The couple started driving around the island to find a stronger signal to call the National Lottery and confirm their win."We are dazed, it's surreal, it's a huge amount of money," Mr Nuttall said.
"You dream of winning the lottery but you never think it's going to be you, but it is."
The pair are both planning on quitting their jobs and Mr Nuttall's first purchase was a new set of golf clubs and a golf bag.
The family are also planning on upsizing their home, despite planning to get a bungalow now their children have left home.
