ialottery blog

Cyclone™ Football Tickets On the Line in New Promotion

 

Are you ready for some football? We’ve got a brand-new second-chance promotion coming your way, and it’s your shot to win a VIP experience at an Iowa State Cyclones™ game this fall!

Starting today, you can enter for a chance to win one of 16 prize packages to your choice of two big home games at Jack Trice Stadium™ in Ames. Here’s what’s up for grabs:

• 8 prizes packages for the Sept. 6 Iowa Corn© Cy-Hawk™ Series Football game against Iowa 
• 8 prize packages for the Nov. 1 game against defending Big 12 champion Arizona State

Each prize package includes:

🎟️ Two suite tickets to the game
🍽️ Food and nonalcoholic drinks in the suite
🚗 A parking pass
🤝 A meet-and-greet with two Cyclone athletes
🎁 $150 in merchandise
💵 $250 in spending money

How to enter

It’s easy! Enter through your VIP Club account with any winning or nonwinning $5 Iowa Mega Millions ticket purchased on or after July 14, 2025. Each ticket equals one entry, no matter how many plays are on it.

You’ll get to pick which game you want to enter for during the first entry period, which runs through 9:59 a.m. on Aug. 20. All entries received after that time will go into the drawing for the Arizona State game.

Drawing dates

📅 Winners for the Iowa game will be drawn on Aug. 21.

📅 Winners for the Arizona State game will be drawn on Oct. 21.

Mega Millions in the Spotlight

This is the first promotion tied to the new $5 Mega Millions game, which launched in April! The innovative game design features a built-in multiplier on every play, a higher starting jackpot of $50 million, faster-growing jackpots and improved overall odds.

Really a Winner? Double-Check Those Details!

Artificial intelligence may be the future, but sometimes it still gets things wrong!

We heard from a VIP Club member this week who stopped by the lottery’s Clive office, excited to claim a prize she thought she’d won in one of our second-chance promotions.

The only problem? She wasn’t a winner.

So, what happened?

It turns out AI gave her some false hope. We’d sent an email to our VIP Club members letting them know the winners were announced, and encouraging them to check the list on our website. The player’s email service features an AI-powered tool to summarize messages, and it mistakenly told her: “You’ve been drawn as one of the winners of the Iowa Lottery’s latest drawing.”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. And when she arrived at our office, we had to deliver the disappointing news. 

This was a first for us, but a reminder that even with all of the new technology out there, there’s no substitute for carefully checking the official details yourself.

As a reminder: We post all of our promotion prize winners at ialottery.com. And if you win, we’ll also contact you directly using the information in your VIP Club account.

So before you celebrate, double-check the official winner list – just to be sure!

Good-bye: Thank You For Spending Time With Me For So Many Years On The Blog!

As we near the point of sliding into the weekend, I’m posting to the blog one last time to thank you for being part a conversation here with me for so many years. Showing that time really does fly, today is my last day at the Iowa Lottery.

I am retiring after being a member of the lottery team for nearly 26 years.

Jackpots & The Speed At Which We Find Out

I think of the huge change in the size of the jackpots during that time! And the speed with which we find out whether there’s been a big winning ticket in Iowa. That used to take several hours, usually until the early morning time, but with today’s faster computers, we generally know whether Iowa has had a winner by about 10:30 p.m.

The way we communicate with each other also has definitely changed! There was no such thing as social media when my career started at the lottery. But we jumped right in when that new thing came along that at the time was called new media. And now you can interact with us on multiple social media platforms

Wait, It’s Not Just One Free Play A Year?

Here’s something else to make you smile: When I started at the Iowa Lottery, the lottery had a birthday club you could join to get a free play mailed to you on your birthday. Fast forward to today, and that’s morphed into the VIP Club where you get a free play every month and can enter contests and promotions for the chance to win exclusive prizes.

The Difference The Lottery Has Made

I think about the tremendous good the lottery has accomplished in our state through the years. During my time here, the lottery has raised more than $42 million for the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund to support veterans and their families. I’m extremely proud to have worked on the legislation to make that possible.

Those Winning Stories

The winner stories are what I’ll remember and miss the most.

I think of the jackpot winner who knew for a couple weeks that he’d hit big, but he waited to claim the prize because he was having so much fun listening to people in his hometown theorize about why the money hadn’t been claimed yet.

Then there was another jackpot winner who bought the small golf course in his community to keep it open for folks to enjoy.

And the winner who knew on a Friday that he’d won a big prize, and he’d have to wait the whole weekend before he could claim his winnings when lottery offices opened on Monday. When I asked him where he kept his ticket for safekeeping that weekend, he said it was in his dentures case because no one would ever look there.

THAT was a story I wasn’t expecting!

Things Change, But They Also Stay The Same 

Through it all, the lottery has kept coming up with new game ideas and provided as many details as we can to help answer your questions.

As I step away, the blog may not be updated as often until new staffers come onboard. There will be more lottery stories to tell in the time to come, and I hope you’ll enjoy talking with the next person who will deliver them.

                                                                                                     -- Mary from the Lottery 

These Are Things You Really Should Know Before You Play

Ever complained that we got the odds wrong? Thought your ticket should have won when it didn’t? Wondered if a message you got is actually a scam? We’ve got new info. to help you find answers.

The new details are all designed to build your lottery know-how and make informed decisions when you buy tickets.

You’ll find it all on our new website page called Know Before You Play.

When you click on one of the topic lines on that page, it will expand to provide that content, but you’ll stay on the same page so you can easily keep going to other topics. When you click on a different topic, the previous section “rolls back up” so only one subject is open at a time.

There are 8 topics on the page, all with real-world examples and scenarios from a consumer-awareness perspective.

The Know Before You Play topics are:

• Know Your Limits
• Know What The Odds Mean
• Know Where You Can Buy Tickets
• Know The Details On Your Ticket
• Know How To Spot Scams & Fraud
• Know How To Play In A Group
• Know What To Do When You Win
• Know When To Take A Break

Player Question: Why Does My Powerball Ticket Say It’s For A Monday Drawing?

Here’s a question from a player that proves time really does fly. The woman bought a Powerball® ticket this month and wondered why it showed that her play was for a Monday drawing.

The short answer is that’s because Powerball has drawings 3 nights a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Monday drawings were added to the game in August of 2021.

But if you’re only an occasional player, or if you’ve had the habit of only buying tickets for the game’s Wednesday and Saturday drawings, maybe you haven’t played on a Monday before.

But Monday drawings have been part of the game for nearly 4 years! It’s not a typo on your ticket when you see that.

So play on Monday if you’d like. Or Wednesday, or Saturday. Or all 3! It truly is your choice.