ialottery blog

Get Ready For First ‘Experience Iowa’ Offers

If you don’t have a Powerball ticket yet for Saturday night’s drawing, you’ll want to go out and get one!

The first special offers available to Iowa Powerball players in the “Experience Iowa” campaign begin Sunday, and you’ll need a nonwinning ticket from Saturday night’s drawing to be eligible. The whole campaign is a way for Iowans to help Iowans save money AND get out and play in our state.

Southern Iowa’s new Honey Creek Resort is the first major attraction that’s making special offers in the campaign. You can use your nonwinning Powerball tickets to get $20 complimentary certificates for any activities at the resort, including food, golf, lodging and its indoor water park.

Honey Creek is one of eight featured attractions in the summer travel initiative from the Iowa Lottery and Iowa Tourism Office. To take advantage of the Honey Creek offer and additional “bonus” discounts from other attractions, Iowa Powerball players who have a nonwinning ticket from Saturday’s drawing will be able to log onto the lottery Web site at www.ialottery.com, print off a coupon there starting Sunday, attach their nonwinning ticket, and then present the coupon to the participating attraction or business to receive the special deal. The initial round of offers will be available through Wednesday.  

Honey Creek is near Rathbun Lake in south-central Iowa. The destination spot offers a 105-room lakeside lodge and hotel, 28 luxury cabins, an 18-hole championship golf course, indoor water park, restaurant and lounge, RV park and boat and bike rentals.

And that’s not the only special offer in the campaign this week. As news of the initiative has spread, other Iowa businesses also have decided to make special, unadvertised bonus offers to Powerball players. So, starting Sunday, players also can visit the lottery’s Web site to find out how they can use their nonwinning Powerball tickets to receive:

• $30 savings on tickets to the North Dakota St.-Iowa St. football game on Sept. 3 in Ames (receive tickets for $10 each vs. $40 retail price).
• Up to $25 savings on tickets to the Principal Charity Golf Classic May 26-31 in West Des Moines (receive single-day tickets for $5 vs. $15 retail price, or a champions club single-day pass for $125 vs. $150 retail price).
• $7.50 savings on tickets to the Summer Jam concert June 27 in Des Moines (tickets for $20 vs. $27.50 retail price).
• A free 16-ounce coffee at U-Stop convenience stores in Council Bluffs, Minden and Crescent.
• A free 20-ounce fountain drink or coffee at all Country Store of Carroll convenience store locations in northwest Iowa.
• A free 20-ounce fountain drink at Fast Break convenience store locations in Fort Madison, Mediapolis, Muscatine and West Burlington.

Lottery Raises Nearly $2.4 Million For Veterans

I’m very proud to share some new numbers with you! Today, the lottery is making its latest transfer of proceeds to the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund, and so far, we’ve raised nearly $2.4 million to help our state’s veterans and their families!

When legislation authorizing the lottery to produce some games to benefit veterans was first discussed last year, we estimated that we’d raise between $2 million and $3 million annually for the cause. Our latest figures keep us right on target to do that in fiscal year 2009.

If you’re an Iowa Lottery player, thank you! You’ve made the veterans-benefit games really popular. And, you’re helping us provide a stable, ongoing source of revenue for the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund!

Legislation dedicating some lottery proceeds to veterans’ causes was signed into law in March 2008 and the first games to benefit the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund began sales last July.

Our latest games to benefit the Trust Fund were released in January. They are Freedom Rings, a $1 scratch game with a Liberty Bell theme; and Land of Liberty, a $1 pull-tab game with a patriotic theme. The lottery’s next set of games to benefit veterans will begin sales in July!

The Odds Don’t Vary With Tickets Sold

We recently got an e-mail from a group of folks who play Powerball® together at work and had a disagreement about the odds in the game. So they contacted us to ask: Do the odds increase, decrease or remain the same depending on how many tickets are sold?

The short answer is that it makes absolutely no difference how many tickets are sold in Powerball or how many states are in the game – the odds stay the same from drawing to drawing. That’s because you’re always playing against the numbers drawn. 

Another way of putting that is to say that the odds in the game are based upon whether the numbers on your ticket match the numbers drawn. And in Powerball, we always draw the five white balls from a pool of 59 and the Powerball from a pool of 39. So, the odds always stay the same.

The only impact that increased sales would have on your odds is that when more tickets are sold for a particular drawing there are better odds that you might have to share the jackpot with another player (assuming you won).

Keep Your Powerball Ticket Handy!

You’re going to be hearing a lot in the next few weeks about a big summer project we’re working on with the Iowa Tourism Office that’s designed to get you out and about in Iowa this summer – and help you save money while you’re at it!

We’ll be using a short and sweet slogan as part of the “Experience Iowa” campaign: Keep Your Powerball Ticket Handy! The Lottery and several of Iowa’s most popular destinations will give special discounts to customers who have a Powerball ticket.

The idea behind the project is a new take on the “help your neighbor” concept. During times of crisis, there are always stories about folks in the Midwest – and Iowans in particular – helping their neighbors and their communities. In our campaign, the state, Iowa communities, Iowa businesses and Iowa attractions are all banding together to help our state weather the current economic storm. We hope that the project will drive millions of dollars in new or additional business into Iowa this summer.

What Is That Thing?

So, I was at a lottery event last night and we were giving out swag, including some small plastic items that are quite in demand in lottery circles. People LOVE these things. I handed one to a guest who shall remain nameless and he gave it kind of a funny look but didn’t say anything.

Later, he said he was thinking about doing the polite thing and throwing it away when we wouldn’t see. But curiosity got the better of him and he just had to ask: What is it? He had a couple really good guesses, things I wouldn’t have thought of: Is it a guitar pick? A bottle opener?

In truth, it’s a ticket scratcher. You know, for scratching the latex off scratch tickets, just in case you don’t have a coin handy and you don’t want to get your fingernail dirty!

So next time you’re at one of our events around the state and we give you one, that’s what it’s for! For illustration purposes, see the pic below!

Lottery Luck Continues For Clinton Woman

A familiar face to us here at the lottery just claimed a $25,000 scratch-game prize.

Back in 2006, Beth Determan of Clinton was part of a group of co-workers who hit it big, winning $667,142 in Powerball's Match 5 bonus system. Each member of the "Lucky 20" group from Medical Associates in Clinton won $33,357.10 before taxes.

Now Determan has won a $25,000 prize in the "Bingo Times 10" scratch game. She says it's like déjà vu!

Determan said she and her husband, Dennis, were on their way to visit her brother in Iowa City when they stopped at a local gas station and Dennis bought her a couple scratch tickets to help pass the time on their drive down. She said she played the tickets and initially thought she’d won $15. But her husband told her to check again.

Determan said that's when she realized that the numbers she’d matched on the ticket formed an "X" on one of the Bingo cards in the play area, and that meant a prize of $25,000.

Determan says she has a large family of five girls, so they’ll definitely put her prize to use! She says they have a wedding coming up and a graduation next fall, just to name a few items on the list.

So does Determan consider herself lucky? She says some family members say she is, but she's not sure. She says she just likes to play lottery tickets, and she wins prizes here and there.

And as for that group at her work? Yep, they're still playing Powerball together, shooting to win the jackpot!

Results Of Midwest Millions Drawing

And the latest $500,000 winner in our Midwest Millions game is … a deputy sheriff from Kansas. Click here to see all the details from our prize drawing. Three Iowans won prizes of $10,000 each!

Iowa and Kansas are now 2-2 in top-prize winners in Midwest Millions. Next year's game could be the tie-breaker!

Your Chance To Attend A Lottery Drawing

Some of the most fun we have at the lottery is during our drawings where we get to give away the big prizes. This Friday, you can be part of the fun while we're at it!

We'll hold the latest drawing in our "Midwest Millions" game at 11:30 a.m. Friday at Jordan Creek Town Center. Join us to see all the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into a lottery drawing! And if you entered a ticket in the drawing, you could see your name selected in person!

Midwest Millions is a joint instant-scratch game we've offered along with the Kansas Lottery. Some of you may remember that we debuted the initial version of the game in 2007. It was the first scratch game in the United States to be played by customers in two different states who competed for prizes as part of one big pool.

Midwest Millions was designed to test the "Powerball concept" that has proven so successful in lotto games. The idea is that by joining together in a game, lotteries can offer bigger prizes and more chances to win than they would have been able to do on their own. From a player perspective, we know that bigger prizes – and more of them – are always in demand, and we try to find ways to deliver those!

Friday's drawing also will help determine bragging rights between Iowa and Kansas! You see, Iowa Lottery players won both $500,000 prizes in the initial version of the game and a Kansas woman won the $500,000 prize in the first drawing this time around.

Will a Kansas Lottery player win the big prize Friday, or will it be someone who bought his/her ticket in Iowa? Come out and see!

We'll kick things off at 10:30 a.m. Friday with Big Ken and Colleen from Des Moines radio station KSTZ, Star 102.5. We'll be in the center court by customer service inside Jordan Creek, and the drawing itself will take place there at 11:30 a.m. Friday.

One player who sent in a nonwinning Midwest Millions ticket for the second-chance drawing will win a $500,000 prize and five other players will win prizes of $10,000 each. We'll have fun giveaways for the audience, too, so we hope to see you there!

Prizes All Paid In Another Round Of Checks

Good news if you’ve ever bought a lottery ticket in Iowa or had a ticket redeemed here!

We’ve conducted another round of security checks at retail locations to see how winning lottery tickets are being handled, and we’re happy to report that all prizes were properly paid.

Some pretty serious problems with ticket redemption have been reported recently in other states, including Minnesota and California.

In Minnesota, eight people who worked at retail locations have been charged with felony lottery fraud after retail compliance checks by the Minnesota Lottery in December and January. Investigators say each of the clerks kept a winning ticket they were presented and attempted to claim the prize themselves. 

And this year in California, more than two dozen people working at retail outlets have been arrested for the grand theft of winning lottery tickets. All of the California suspects are accused of cheating lottery customers.

Here in Iowa, we’ve conducted a couple rounds of security checks.

Lottery security investigators posing as customers visited 126 Iowa retail locations in late February and presented lottery tickets for cashing that each had won a prize of up to $100. The outlets were in 76 communities in 54 counties and included urban and rural locations. We also went to a mix of the different types of businesses that sell lottery tickets. In every instance, the location paid the correct amount.

This week, we followed that up with another round of checks, this time at 14 locations in eight communities in central and western Iowa. And again, winning tickets were presented that had each won prizes of up to $100 and all prizes were properly paid. It appears we’ve got a smooth-running system in our state, but we all have to be on the look-out if we’re going to protect ourselves against fraud.

We’re going to keep doing these random checks of the ticket-cashing process. At the lottery, we consider it part of our duty to protect consumers as well as the integrity of the Iowa Lottery.

You can help by contacting us if you ever have a concern about the lottery, its products or operations. Our main number is 515-725-7900 and our e-mail is Wmaster@ialottery.com. If you have a security-related concern, please call our Security Department directly at 515-725-7888.

Payouts Today Vs. 1985

The passage of time seems to have a way of tinting to our impressions. At least that’s my interpretation of why the following question is a regular in the lottery’s inbox.

It may come in with slightly different wording than this, but the sentiment is the same: Is the payout on your scratch tickets lower today than when the lottery started? The answer, quite simply, is no. In fact, our payouts today are higher than those in any of our initial games.

When the Iowa Lottery started back in 1985, we sold one scratch game at a time compared to the two dozen or so we have for sale at any one time now. The payout percentage in the lottery’s initial games was about 50 percent. Depending on the game, our instant-scratch tickets today have prize percentages between 57 and 75 percent.

That’s a trend you’ll find across the lottery industry: Over time, payouts have increased. If you check out the Minnesota Lottery’s Web site, you’ll see that they’ve answered the same question in the same way. 

Why? Higher prize percentages mean more winning tickets, which means more people buy lottery tickets. That ultimately creates higher overall lottery sales and more profits for the worthy causes helped by lotteries. The end result is that players are happy because they win more prizes, and everyone benefits because more money is available to help valuable state programs.

Now, I wonder how long it will be before that question shows up again in our inbox?