Rookie Season: X’s & O’s draws crowds and a few complaints

Powerball launched a new game this month. It's called X's & O's, and it borrows the NFL's playbook: pick eight team logos, match them against a weekly draw, and win cash. The idea is simple. The early results were a little more complicated.

A game built for football season

Before the first drawing even happened, lottery players were talking. A Reddit thread asked the obvious question: would an NFL-themed game pull in new interest? The answers leaned curious, if not fully sold.

One commenter, OverallConfidence794,  pointed to the game's second-chance drawings as the real hook: "There are second chance drawings that are offered through Powerball and MUSL that make the game a bit more attractive for a football fan!" User MewtwoStruckBack said they'd buy in modestly, just to stay in the mix: "I'll probably buy 1 or 2 tickets per draw just to have something in on second chance."

Not everyone was rushing to the counter. The user CzarcasticX set a price on their attention: "Not at the starting $1 million jackpot. Maybe if it reaches over $10 million." Over on LotteryPost, a poster who couldn't even play at launch said he'd give the game time: "I'll give the game some time to see where the jackpot goes. I'm wondering if they have projected how high the jackpot will reach."

That's a fair description of a new game's honeymoon phase. People are watching. Some are not fully in yet.

The curiosity wasn't limited to Reddit. On Instagram, player bygmyke24 posted a photo of a ticket with a simple challenge: "Ok power ball I see you 👀! Anyone played this new game yet?" On Facebook, April Mclendon of Bullhead City, Arizona, walked her friends through the rules in one line: "There's a New Powerball Draw Game called X's & O's for all you Football Fans. Just pick 8 teams and match 4 to win!! Kinda neat!!" Neither post reads like marketing copy. That's the kind of organic buzz a new game can't buy.

The first drawing got a penalty

Sunday night's inaugural drawing pulled in more than 39,000 winners across the country. No one hit the jackpot, so that $1 million prize rolls forward. But a lot of winners got a smaller check than the ticket promised.

Powerball's own prize chart sets fixed payouts for each tier, but they also clarify that, under certain circumstances, prizes will be paid on a pari-mutuel basis instead. This is what happened on the first draw. In plain terms, instead of a locked dollar amount, a fixed share of the prize pool gets split equally among everyone who wins in that tier. The fact that there are more winners means a smaller check for each. Fewer winners mean a bigger one. It's built into the game for exactly this scenario.

The gap showed up hardest at the top of the lower tiers. Nineteen players matched seven of eight teams. They expected $20,000. They got $500. Eight hundred and ten players matched six of eight. They expected $500. They got $40. Lower down, the gap was smaller: players who matched five of eight got $34 instead of $40, and those who matched four of eight got the full $7 as advertised.

Powerball's explanation, issued the morning after, pointed to ticket sales and an unusually high number of winners at the top tiers.

Where Powerball X's & O's go from here

Bumpy first weeks don't sink a new game. Powerball has 23 jurisdictions selling tickets, a jackpot that just got bigger, and a built-in audience of football fans who check the standings every Monday anyway. The pari-mutuel surprise is a real strike against the game's credibility. But the appetite that showed up on Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook before a single prize was paid out, the "I'll put a little in," the "kinda neat," the "let's see where the jackpot goes," suggests X's & O's has more chances to win people over than it's had games to prove it.

For the second and third draws, prizes were paid as advertised, so six winners took home $20,000 on October 20 after matching 7 of the logos, and 10 more did so on September 27. The jackpot remains unclaimed.

That next chance comes fast. The fourth Powerball X's & O's drawing is set for Sunday, October 4, at roughly 9:00 p.m. CT (10:00 p.m. ET), with ticket sales cutting off shortly before. The estimated jackpot sits at $1.2 million, boosted by last week's rollover.