ialottery blog

Tiny Town Becomes Iowa’s Newest “Lucky Town”

Perhaps these people have held magical fairies captive and are sprinkling fairy dust on themselves before they go shopping. Or maybe they’ve got horse shoes hanging above their beds.

We’ve written before about towns that have a run of lottery luck, producing a few winners in a short period of time.

Well, the newest “lucky town” is the southwest Iowa burg of Tabor. Population just 993, Tabor has seen two big lottery winners in a span of just three days!

The first big winner was Myra Mullins of Tabor, who won $15,000 playing our “Betty Boop™” scratch game. Myra’s win was an early birthday gift, as she celebrates her birthday in a few days.

Myra purchased her winning ticket at Casey’s, 1211 Washington St. in Hamburg.

Our second big winner is Alan Achenbach, who is also from Tabor. Alan won the very first top prize playing our new “Minute To Win It™” scratch game!

He purchased his winning ticket at Tabor Market & Deli, 706 Main St. in Tabor.

If you’re over in the Tabor area, you may want to stop and soak in some lottery luck before moving on!

Double Points To Kick Off New Scratch Game

An eye-catching new scratch game is hitting the streets here in Iowa today, and we’re celebrating by offering double points on nonwinning tickets in that game for a month in our VIP Club. Hint, hint: That’s your cue to deal yourself in on “Aces High.”

From noon today through noon on Feb. 6, when you enter a nonwinning Aces High ticket in your VIP Club account, you’ll get double points. You’ll know that happened when the double points starburst appears on the screen, so be on the lookout for it!

You likely already know the 411 on the VIP Club, but if not, remember that you can use points in your lottery VIP Club account for everything from music downloads to the hottest electronics, so be sure to enter nonwinning Aces High tickets for the next month to get those extra points!

Happy Holidays! Time for a Twitter Contest

Hopefully you all can take some time out of your busy holiday schedule to join us for a Twitter contest!

This time, we’ll be giving away three prize packs of $20 in one of our holiday scratch games. The winners will get to try their luck at our “Holiday Wishes” scratch ticket. It’s a $5 game with top prizes of $50,000!

And don’t forget, if you get some non-winners, you can enter them into your VIP Club account to earn points to use in our Points For Prizes™ online store. But that’s not all: We’re also running our “Super Tech” promotion right now. The Holiday Wishes tickets can get you in the running for some sweet electronics, OR help get you an entry for a chance to win one of the Super Prize packages.

The contest is set for noon on Tuesday, Dec. 13. To be eligible to enter, just follow us on Twitter – it’s free to create an account if you don’t already have one. Then give us the correct answer to our super-easy contest question and you’ll be entered for a chance to win one of the ticket prize packages.   

At noon next Tuesday, we’ll pose our question on Twitter. Reply with your answer within the 15-minute time limit and you’ll be entered in the contest! Reply to @ialottery on Twitter. (Don’t direct message us on Twitter, as direct messages aren’t eligible for entry.)

To determine our winners this time around, we’ll be playing a holiday round of the Concentration card game (also known as Memory)! We’ll select ten semi-finalists’ names and put them on 20 cards. The first three matches we make are our winners!

As always, we’ll record a video after the contest and post it on our website and YouTube. We’ll also blog about the winners here, and link to that blog entry on Twitter.

If you win, you’ll need to contact us with your name, date of birth and mailing address so we can send out your tickets. Winners will have until 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 20, to contact us with their information in order to claim their prize.

A few other details:
• You must be at least 21 years old to enter.
• You must live in Iowa.
• There’s no purchase necessary to enter or win!

And now for the fine print: This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Twitter. You understand that you are providing your information to the Iowa Lottery and not to Twitter. The information you provide will only be used for the lottery’s Twitter Contest. The risk of loss for electronic misdelivery, late delivery or failure of receipt for information entered electronically remains with entrant regardless of the cause of the transmission failure.

Winners of the Veterans Twitter Contest

Thanks to everyone who entered our Twitter contest today! We asked you to tell us the name of a veteran you know and the branch of the military in which they served. And, boy, was it cool seeing all those veterans’ names come up on our Twitter page!

There was a definite twist to today’s contest. Since everybody is a winner when they play the lottery’s veterans games, ALL of you who entered the contest today are winners!

You have all won $5 in “Veterans Hot $50” scratch tickets, a lottery “Dream” T-shirt and a VIP Club starter card worth 750 points to use in our Points For Prizes™ online store.

The winners need to contact us by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 22 to claim their prizes. And remember, if you’re a VIP Club member, you’ll get TRIPLE POINTS for your non-winning Veterans Hot $50 tickets this month! And if you’re not already a VIP Club member, no worries, it’s free to become a member.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this month’s contest. Stay tuned for the next one coming soon!

You can ‘Super Tech’ the Halls This Year!

That’s right; our techie holiday promotion is back for its third year running, but with a twist! We had over one million entries in our “Tech The Halls” promotions in 2009 and 2010 combined, so we’re bringing you a bigger, better “Super Tech” this season!

Players who enter Super Tech have a chance at winning one of more than 250 prizes of Sony® electronics, including six Super Prize packages worth more than $4,900 each!

You can enter through noon Jan. 23 and the drawing is set for Jan. 24. As usual, results will be posted on our website.

There are 10 holiday tickets you can enter in the Super Tech promotion through your VIP Club account and different prizes are involved for different tickets. 

Here are the tickets you can enter and the prizes you can win:

•    Enter non-winning $1 Snow Bank or Winter Bucks for chance to win one of 50 Sony® portable DVD players

•    Enter non-winning $2 Lucky Elves Bingo, Betty Boop™ or Santa Games Doubler for a chance to win one of 50 Sony® 3D Bloggie® HD cameras

•    Enter non-winning $3 Merry Crossword or Sparkling Winnings for a chance to win one of 50 Sony® PlayStation® 3 packages (160GB)

•    Enter non-winning $5 Holiday Bonus Crossword and Holiday Wishes for a chance to win one of 50 Sony® Tablet™ S (16GB) prizes

•    Enter non-winning $10 Holiday Countdown for a chance to win one of 50 Sony® BRAVIA® 32-inch HDTVs!

And, if you enter one of each of the 10 holiday scratch tickets, you’ll automatically receive an entry at the Super Prize level. Each Super Prize package includes all of the following electronic prizes plus $2,000 cash: Sony® BRAVIA® 46-inch HDTV, Sony® NEX-C3 digital camera, Sony® Tablet™ S (16GB), Sony® PlayStation® 3 (160GB) and Sony® 3D Blu-ray Disc™ home theater system. State withholding taxes for the prize package also will be paid.
    
All holiday tickets entered into the Super Tech promotion also will earn players “Points For Prizes™” that can be used in the Iowa Lottery’s VIP Club store.

 © 2011 King Features Syndicate, Inc./Fleischer Studios, Inc.
™Hearst Holdings, Inc./Fleischer Studios, Inc. www.bettyboop.com and www.bettyboopstore.com
Copyright © 2011 Sony Electronics Inc. All Rights Reserved.
®Sony products, marks and logos are registered trademarks of Sony Inc. and are used with permission.

Where Did My Favorite Game Go?

We’ve had several inquiries lately about tickets missing from store shelves – or so it seems.

You may have noticed over time that we remove games from sale for a few different reasons -- perhaps the final top prize has been won, maybe the game has been running for a long time and is simply getting stale, or it might be a seasonal game that was only scheduled to run for a few months.

Right now, apparently a lot of folks are wondering: “Where’s my favorite game?”

If you’re a regular “Crossword” player or you really like one of our $5 tickets and you’re only seeing holiday games right now, don’t worry! We haven’t gotten rid of those other games for good.

This year we’re featuring 10 holiday tickets; it’s the most we’ve ever had and people are winning big on them! However, because there are so many holiday games out right now and there’s only so much room to go around at the retail level, we’ve pulled some of our other games for the time being. But as you can imagine, the holiday games only run for a short time, so our other games will be coming back in February!

And if you’re ever looking for lottery tickets in general, you can use our website to see which retailers are in your area.

Thanks to You, We’re Winning Awards!

This week was the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries (NASPL) 2011 conference, and we walked out with a few awards!

Thanks in part to all you blog readers, I received the Powers Award for Public Relations through Social Media. Powers Awards are presented in recognition of the significant contributions lottery and vendor employees have made to the lottery world. These awards are named in honor of the late Edward J. Powers, the “Father of U.S. Lotteries.” The Iowa Lottery and I appreciate your support!

Another thing to celebrate: The lottery’s “Rock of Ages” scratch ticket was named one of the top three instant tickets of the year! You probably remember our $2 scratch ticket and the corresponding Rock of Ages promotion. We gave away Broadway show tickets, signed guitars and an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City for two.

The ticket was actually designed right here at Lottery headquarters by one of our own staff. You can bet she’s really proud of the ticket now! We did our best to make the promotion a rockin’ good time, and it seems like it worked.

Thanks to all of you for making our success possible!

Is It That Time of the Year Already?

Ready or not, the holidays are coming! We kicked off the holiday season with our third tech-themed holiday promotion. This year, we’re calling it Super Tech; and we’re giving away some super prizes.

Since we changed things up a bit, we have a lot of information to dole out to our players about Super Tech, and we’re doing our best to make things as simple as we can. You can brush up on all the information on our website.

Last week, we got our first really great question about the promotion. One of you reached out to us via email and asked, “I entered ten holiday tickets into the Super Tech promotion using my VIP Club account, but I don’t have any entries into the Super Prize. Why?”

That IS a great question. And here’s the answer: You need to enter one of each of the 10 holiday tickets available this holiday season to receive one eligible entry for the Super Prize. Remember, our holiday tickets are hitting retailers in waves this season, but all 10 tickets will be available by the end of October.

If you’ve got questions about the Super Tech promotion, or anything for that matter, send them our way! You can submit questions here on the blog, via Twitter or Facebook, or through our email address, wmaster@ialottery.com.

Have fun ‘Super Teching’ the halls this season!

Feeling “Spooky?” Join our Twitter Contest!

As Halloween approaches, we’re getting into the mood with a “spooky” Twitter contest! It just so happens we’ve got a Halloween-themed scratch game out there called “Spooky Loot,” so we’re using it for a fun contest!

In this month’s contest, three winners will each receive $20 in the Spooky Loot scratch game. The game has nine top prizes of $13,000 and lots of other prizes, too! 

We also listened to the suggestions of our Twitter followers and changed our contest time so it will take place over the lunch hour. Some of our Twitter friends had said they thought more people could be a part of our contests if they hit over lunch, so we’re giving it a try!   

This time, our Twitter contest is set for noon, next Tuesday, Oct. 4. Be sure to mark your calendars so you’ll remember we’ve changed the time slot!

To be eligible to enter, just follow us on Twitter – it’s free to create an account. Then give us the correct answer to our super-easy contest question and you’ll be entered for a chance to win one of the ticket prize packages.   

At noon next Tuesday, we’ll pose our question on Twitter. Reply with your answer within the 15-minute time limit and you’ll be entered in the contest! Reply to @ialottery on Twitter. (Don’t direct message us on Twitter, as direct messages aren’t eligible for entry.)

We’ll draw six semi-finalists’ names out of a bucket and have an in-house competition to determine the winners. It’ll be interesting to see what spooky game we can dream up to play this time. We’re thinking something with spaghetti hair and grape eyeballs might be appropriate… 

We’ll videotape the contest results, then post the video on our website and YouTube. We’ll also post a list of the winners’ names here on our blog, and a link to that blog on Twitter.

If you win, you’ll need to contact us with your name, date of birth and mailing address so we can send out your tickets. Winners will have until 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 11, to contact us with their information in order to claim their prize. We’ll also select alternate names in case any of the winners don’t contact us within the specified amount of time.

A few other details:
• You must be at least 21 years old to enter.
• You must live in Iowa.
• There’s no purchase necessary to enter or win!

And now for the fine print: This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Twitter. You understand that you are providing your information to the Iowa Lottery and not to Twitter. The information you provide will only be used for the lottery’s Twitter Contest. The risk of loss for electronic misdelivery, late delivery or failure of receipt for information entered electronically remains with entrant regardless of the cause of the transmission failure.

Celebrating Tailgate Mania with a Twitter Contest

We kicked off our “Great State Tailgate” promotion Monday, and we’re lovin’ it! So we've decided to continue celebrating tailgating season with a Twitter contest.

This time we’ll be giving away three set of $20 in Great State Tailgate scratch tickets. And keep in mind that the winners won’t just have the chance to win prizes ranging from $2 to $10,000 on their tickets – they also can use any nonwinning tix in the game to enter the Great State Tailgate promotion for a chance to win the towable tailgate!

Our Twitter contest is set for 10 a.m. next Tuesday, Sept. 6. Be sure to mark your calendars so you’ll remember to tune in for the contest after the long holiday weekend!

To be eligible to enter, just follow us on Twitter – it’s free to create an account. Then give us the correct answer to our super-easy contest question and you’ll be entered for a chance to win one of the ticket prize packages.   

At 10 a.m. next Tuesday, we’ll pose our question on Twitter. Reply with your answer within the 15-minute time limit and you’ll be entered in the contest! Reply to @ialottery on Twitter. (Don’t direct message us on Twitter, as direct messages aren’t eligible for entry.)

We’ll draw six semi-finalists’ names out of a bucket and have an in-house competition to determine the winners. We’ll be playing our own version of finger-flick football, and it’s sure to be a heated contest (assuming, of course, that we can actually make our paper football go through our goalposts made out of straws)! 

We’ll videotape the contest results, then post the video on our website and YouTube. We’ll also post a list of the winners’ names here on our blog, and a link to that blog on Twitter.

If you win, you’ll need to contact us with your name, date of birth and mailing address so we can send out your tickets. Winners will have until 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 13, to contact us with their information in order to claim their prize. We’ll also select alternate names in case any of the winners don’t contact us within the specified amount of time.

A few other details:
• You must be at least 21 years old to enter.
• You must live in Iowa.
• There’s no purchase necessary to enter or win!

And now for the fine print: This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Twitter. You understand that you are providing your information to the Iowa Lottery and not to Twitter. The information you provide will only be used for the lottery’s Twitter Contest. The risk of loss for electronic misdelivery, late delivery or failure of receipt for information entered electronically remains with entrant regardless of the cause of the transmission failure.