By Swikriti
Annette Tennal wasn’t chasing a headline when she opened a digital instant game in the passenger seat of a car outside Shelby, North Carolina. She was passing time while her husband drove, tapping through a few plays on her phone. Then the screen flipped from routine to surreal: $676,572 — the kind of number that pulls a body upright before the mind catches up.
“I hit it, and then I got to hollering,” Tennal said, recalling the moment the win landed. Her husband didn’t immediately understand what was happening, only that something had jolted the calm of the drive. Tennal, a grandmother of four, said she didn’t believe it at first. The instinct was to question the reality of it, not celebrate it.
Deal snapshot: A $10 play on the Bison Bonanza digital instant game hit the top-tier Epic jackpot worth $676,572. After required federal and state tax withholdings, the reported take-home amount was $487,202.
A progressive jackpot that can be won any time
The prize Tennal hit wasn’t tied to a traditional draw night. Bison Bonanza is a digital instant game with a progressive jackpot, meaning the top prize grows over time and can be won at any moment — not just on a scheduled date. That structure is part of the appeal: no waiting for a televised drawing, no anticipation building toward a fixed cutoff. The jackpot is effectively “live,” and any eligible play can trigger it.
Tennal’s win was the game’s highest payout tier — the Epic jackpot — with odds listed at 1 in 3.1 million. The probability is steep enough to read as abstract, right up until it stops being abstract for someone sitting in a car with a phone in hand.
Taxes turned the headline number into cash reality
Lottery stories often move on the headline figure, but the market-style reality check is the after-tax number — the amount that actually hits a winner’s finances. Tennal claimed her prize at lottery headquarters days later. After required federal and state tax withholdings, she took home $487,202 from the $676,572 jackpot.
That take-home figure still lands in the category of life-changing money for most households, but it also shows why headline jackpots can mislead casual readers. The spread between the announced prize and the net payout can be substantial, and the winner’s plans typically reflect the net, not the gross.
A practical plan: bills first, then a new car
Tennal’s first priorities were pragmatic. She said she plans to use the money to pay bills and buy a new car. In a lottery ecosystem that can sometimes glamorize sudden wealth, the decision reads as a balance-sheet approach: reduce liabilities, then upgrade an essential asset.
For families, that kind of sequencing matters. Paying down obligations can increase monthly flexibility and reduce stress immediately. A reliable vehicle can be the difference between stability and disruption, especially for households juggling work, caregiving, and the unpredictable costs of everyday life.
How the game is priced and why $10 stood out
In Bison Bonanza, players can choose stakes from 50 cents up to $30 per play. Tennal played at $10 — not the minimum, not the maximum, but a midrange wager that’s common among players who want a meaningful shot at upper-tier prizes without escalating to top-end bets.
Digital instant games are played exclusively online via the lottery’s website or the official mobile app, a format that has widened participation by removing physical barriers. Instead of buying a paper ticket at a retailer, the entire experience is compressed into a few taps: select the game, choose the stake, play immediately, and see the outcome in real time.
What happened after the jackpot was hit
Progressive jackpots don’t linger at peak levels once they’re won. After Tennal hit the Epic jackpot, the prize reportedly reset to $50,000 and then began climbing again. By the end of that same week, it had grown to over $141,000 — a rapid rebuild that underscores the mechanics of progressive pools: they can replenish quickly when player activity remains steady.
That reset-and-growth cycle is one of the key behavioral hooks. Big numbers attract attention, attention drives participation, and participation pushes the jackpot higher until it is hit again. It’s a feedback loop that has helped digital instant games become a major lane for lottery engagement, especially among players who prefer instant outcomes over scheduled drawings.
The broader shift: lottery play moving to always-on screens
Tennal’s story lands at a time when lotteries are leaning harder into online play. The digital shelf is deep — dozens of different instant games available at once, each with its own theme, pricing, and prize ladder. The result is an always-on ecosystem where the next “big win” can happen in a checkout line, on a lunch break, or, as in Tennal’s case, in a passenger seat on a Saturday drive.
For readers, the detail that sticks is how normal the moment was right up until it wasn’t. A quick play became a large cash outcome. A routine car ride turned into a family group chat filled with dancing emojis. And a single screen delivered a number that can reshape a household’s next few years in an instant.
Official details on the win and the digital instant game are published by the North Carolina Education Lottery here: North Carolina Education Lottery announcement.
