Keno history

Keno was the fourth game added to the New Zealand Lotteries Commission, now trading as Lotto New Zealand. The first-ever Lotto draw was held on August 1st, 1987. Later followed the Instant Kiwi Scratchcards (1989), Lotto Strike (1993), and only in 1994 Keno was established.

Keno follows the format of the popular bingo game, so it’s part-lottery, part-bingo. Draws are held every single day at 10 am, 1 pm, 3 pm, and 6 pm making it one the most actively played lottery games in the world. To win, players have to correctly guess 0-10 numbers out of 20 winning numbers randomly drawn from a total of 80 possible numbers. Prizes range between $1 and $250,000.

Not many changes were made to Keno ever since it launched in 1994. On May 26th, 2008, Lotto New Zealand launched MyLotto - an online sales channel allowing customers to buy their tickets online. This applied for players of Lotto, Keno, and Bullseye.

The main and only real change made to Keno was in February 2019. A great add-on feature called Keno Multiplier was added to the lottery game to give players the chance to multiply their prizes. Basically, it doubles the cost of your ticket, but your winnings also greatly increase. Simply add Multiplier to your ticket and it will be applied to all of your lines and draws on that ticket. Then, all of your winnings will be multiplied by the Multiplier number drawn. There are five possible Multiplier numbers - 1.5, 2, 3, 5, and 10. Here are the odds of each Multiplier number:

• 1.5 - 1 in 1.9
• 2 - 1 in 3
• 5 - 1 in 21.5
• 10 - 1 in 86

Since Keno is a relatively new game to Lotto New Zealand, that pretty much sums up its history. At least for now.