ialottery blog

Hoops Winners Having A ‘Suite’ Time At The Tourney!

We had two sessions of “Suite Seats” winners who got to enjoy men’s college basketball tournament games yesterday in Des Moines and we’ve got another round to go tomorrow!

A total of 48 promotion winners and their guests are joining us this week at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines to watch the tournament games. Our winners have gotten to hang out in a private suite, cheer for some of the best college players in the country and watch for the big upsets that this time of year almost always seems to bring!

In the photos here, you can see four of our winners: Ed Heritage of Grimes, Dennis Mokaya of Ames, Dawn Devito of Indianola, and James Doeden of Ankeny.       

Des Moines is getting good reviews in its second go-round as one of the tournament’s regional hosting cities. And even as the basketball games are still being played this week, Des Moines officials are already looking ahead to the next time they’ll have the chance to bid to host the men’s tournament again.

Congratulations again to all our Suite Seats promotion winners! We hope you’ve had fun with us at the tournament.

Is An “X” A Signature?

Here’s a great question that just came our way, in case you’ve ever wondered the same thing. A man who works at a gas station that sells Iowa Lottery tickets emailed us to ask if an “X” on the back of a lottery ticket counts as a signature.

Here are the details we shared with him, which we also include on the “Sign Your Ticket FAQs” page of our website. The quick answer is that an “X” is not a signature. Players should sign the back of a lottery ticket the same way they sign a check or any other legal document. Don’t use just your initials or an X, but rather, use your signature.

Why does that matter? Signing your ticket is an easy way for you to protect your purchase. Your signature identifies your lottery ticket – and any prize you may win – as belonging to you.

Another Take On It: Why There Are More Winners In Higher-Population Areas

In a recent blog, we posted a fun, interactive map that shows all the lottery prizes of $600 or more that were claimed in February. The map brought up some good questions from folks, particularly about the patterns it revealed.

One reader wondered how there could be more winning tickets in higher-population areas when the distribution of tickets is random. The man said he thought that if ticket distribution truly was random, there would be no way that population or the sales at a particular store would matter. But simply by the math involved, they do.

Maybe these visual examples can help make things clear:
 
Store A, which sells 70 tickets per week

Let’s say that each day, a particular store has 50 customers, and 20 percent of them buy a lottery scratch ticket. That means the store sells 10 tickets a day, or 70 tickets in a week. And that means there are only 70 possibilities for winning tickets from that store. 

Store B, which sells 350 tickets per week

In this example, the store involved has 250 customers per day, one in five of whom buy a lottery scratch ticket. That means the store sells 50 tickets a day, or 350 tickets in a week.

Because the busier store sells more tickets, there also will naturally be more winners there. That doesn’t mean the store is luckier, it’s just a matter of sales volume.

For a store with less foot traffic, it will take longer to sell more tickets. And fewer tickets being sold overall means that fewer winning tickets will be sold.

Winning tickets are distributed randomly throughout the entire supply in any of our scratch games. And, our tickets are delivered to the 2,400 lottery retailers in Iowa in no particular order. So, there truly is no way to know when and where the next winning ticket will be purchased.

Stores that sell the most lottery tickets generally are in the biggest communities in our state simply because that’s where more people live and do business.

$1 Million Powerball Prize About To Expire!

Here is video from our event yesterday to highlight the $1 million prize that’s nearing its expiration date in central Iowa! We’re hoping to jog someone’s memory who purchased a Powerball ticket at this Casey’s in Nevada for the drawing on April 11, 2018, and won $1 million! The deadline to claim the prize is at 4 p.m. on April 11, 2019. Is it YOU?

Just 1 Month Is Left For Unclaimed $1 Million Prize In Central Iowa

It’s crunch time now.

There’s just a month to go for a $1 million Powerball® prize won in central Iowa, so we’re issuing another reminder for players to double-check their tickets. We held a news conference today in Nevada at the store where the $1 million-winning ticket was sold in the hopes that we can jog someone’s memory that they may have the winning ticket.  

The $1 million prize was won in the Powerball drawing on April 11, 2018, with a ticket purchased at Casey’s, 1800 S. B Ave. in Nevada. It came close to winning that night’s $89.7 million jackpot, matching the first five numbers but missing the Powerball. The winning numbers that night were: 16-18-27-55-67 and Powerball 18. The Power Play® number was 3.
 
The winner or winners have until the close of business at 4 p.m. on April 11, 2019, to claim the $1 million prize at lottery headquarters in Clive.

Casey’s received a $1,000 bonus from the lottery for selling the $1 million prize at one of its stores.

One other ticket that won a prize of at least $50,000 is unclaimed in Iowa and will expire within the next six months if the winner(s) don’t come forward in time to claim it. Here are details about that ticket:

Game           Prize Drawing                      Amount Won            Retailer                            Expiration
Powerball     Sept. 1, 2018                        $50,000                      Fareway, Pleasant Hill     Sept. 2, 2019 

If you think you’ve won an Iowa Lottery prize and have questions before coming forward to claim it, please reach out to us at the lottery at 515-725-7900 or wmaster@ialottery.com.
  
In fiscal year 2018, more than $1.4 million in lottery prizes went unclaimed in Iowa. The money from unclaimed prizes in our state goes into the lottery’s prize pools for future games and promotions, so it will be used to pay prizes, just not those prizes that have expired.

 

Messages Of Help & Hope During National Problem Gambling Awareness Month

During the next week, you’ll see messages on a variety of platforms to remind us all that it’s National Problem Gambling Awareness Month. Our hope is that the right information will be provided at the right time to someone who needs it.

Whether you’re watching TV, driving in the car with the radio on, surfing the web or using an audio- or video-streaming service, you’ll likely see one of the public service announcements we’ve produced in conjunction with the Iowa Department of Public Health.

Our 2019 campaign begins during Sunday’s 10 p.m. local newscasts, when our PSA will be aired by television stations statewide. Then throughout the coming week, our PSA messages will be shown on outdoor billboards and local broadcast and cable channels; streamed on digital audio and video platforms; and aired by radio stations statewide. While the bulk of our campaign will occur during the coming week, some messages will continue to air through the end of March.           

March is National Problem Gambling Awareness Month, and we want you to have the conversation if you have a concern about problem gambling.

Remember that problem gamblers come from any background. They can be rich or poor, young or old, male or female. Problem gambling can affect people of every race and religion, and every education and income level. The one constant is that problem gambling is treatable.

Signs of problem gambling include:

• thinking a lot about gambling, such as past gambling experiences, future gambling ventures, or ways of getting money for gambling.
• needing to gamble with larger amounts of money or with larger bets in order to get the same feeling of excitement.
• repeatedly trying to cut down or stop gambling without success.
• feeling restless or irritable when trying to cut down or stop gambling.
• gambling to run away from problems or to get relief from feeling depressed, anxious, or bad about yourself.
• often returning after gambling losses to try to win back money.
• lying to family members, friends or others in order to hide gambling activities from them.
• losing or almost losing a significant relationship, job, or an educational or career opportunity because of gambling.
• relying on others to provide money to relieve a desperate financial situation caused by gambling.

If you ever have questions or concerns about problem gambling, visit https://yourlifeiowa.org to learn about the help available by phone, in person, or through secure chat or video.

All The Spots With Big Prizes In February

We’ve made it to the other side of a snowy-nasty February, so we’re pausing to look back at the biggest lottery prizes claimed in Iowa during the shortest month of the year (which sometimes felt like the longest this time around).

This map shows all of the lottery prizes of $600 or more that were claimed in February. You’ll find 399 dots on it, as compared to 427 on January’s map. The difference comes down to February’s shorter number of days, because both months averaged about 14 to 15 big winners per day. So even with the wintry weather, people still made it in to see us and claim their prizes!  

I said it when we looked at January’s numbers and I’ll say it again now: The patterns on this map put into perspective something that we’ve often said about prize wins: In bigger cities, more people are buying tickets and winning prizes. That’s not a matter of luck, it’s a matter of population.

Another way of putting it is that if 5 percent of lottery tickets are sold in a particular area, you expect to find about 5 percent of the overall winners there. Everyone has the same chance of winning, but there will be more winners in places where more tickets are being sold. That’s why there are more dots (prizes) on this map in areas where there are bigger populations. But there really is no telling where the next big winner will hit.

Click here for a direct link to this map in an interactive format where you can see the details involved. Each dot shows the retail location where the winning ticket was purchased, the prize won, the game involved, and the date the prize was claimed.

The dots are in different colors for the four types of lottery games here in Iowa: scratch games, lotto games, InstaPlay games and pull-tab games. Scratch tickets have always been the Iowa Lottery’s leading product and they’re represented on the map by red dots, so it makes sense that there are a lot of them!

I’ll note that this map only shows those big prizes that were claimed in January. It doesn’t include prizes that were won but haven’t been claimed yet.

A Look Back 30+ Years For National Old Stuff Day!

We’re taking a trip down memory lane because tomorrow is National Old Stuff Day!

That’s according to the National Day Calendar™, the website that tracks unusual and unique national days and has a day for just about everything.

According to the explanation given, National Old Stuff Day is a time to acknowledge the history in our lives, but at the same time, break out of our old routines and try something new. 

So, to celebrate the history of the Iowa Lottery, we’re looking back to our very first game ever, which hit store shelves on Aug. 22, 1985, the day the lottery started. The $1 scratch game was called “Scratch, Match & Win!” and it was the only product we had at the time. More than 1.1 million tickets were sold in the lottery’s first four hours.

And below is a photo taken in the lead-up to the lottery’s start, with one of our staffers from back then posing in a “money bags” costume that was part of the start-up celebration. My, oh my, how time flies!

Fast forward to today, and the Iowa Lottery has four product lines: scratch games, lotto games, InstaPlay games and pull-tab games. We do our best to have a mix of games in the marketplace because we know that variety is the spice of life these days!

In keeping with the theme of Old Stuff Day, we’ll go on thinking about new game and prize ideas so the lottery can keep bringing you entertainment options while doing our best to raise proceeds for the state causes that benefit us all.

48 Winners Headed To Bball Tourney In Des Moines!

Our Suite Seats promotion ended yesterday, and 48 lucky winners scored tickets to next month’s men’s basketball tournament at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines. Click here to see the list of winners!

 

We had winners from all around Iowa, and even one from Burnsville, Minn.! Each prize package includes a pair of tickets in an exclusive Lottery suite on either Thursday, March 21 or Saturday, March 23, along with food, beverages and a parking pass – everything they’ll need for a fun time at the tournament!

 

If you’re one of the winners, please check your inbox for an email on how to claim your prize.

Two Friends Keep Their Handshake Agreement & Split Big Lottery Prize

I just love this story: Two long-time friends from northeast Iowa have made good on a handshake agreement from years ago that they'd split any big lottery prizes they won.

Chris Smith of Cascade and Mark Bussan of Dubuque have split a Lucky for Life lotto prize of $25,000 a year for life.

The friends said they kept their big win quiet before they claimed their prize, wanting to make sure it actually was true before they started spreading the word.

They're co-workers at Webber Metal Products in Cascade said both they’ll use their winnings to pay bills and plan for retirement. And if they have anything to say about it, this isn’t their last big lottery win. Their motto is: “We’ll keep splitting if we keep hitting.”

Their ticket matched the first five numbers but missed the Lucky Ball in Monday night’s Lucky for Life drawing to win a prize of $25,000 a year for life.

Chris said he was the one who checked the winning numbers after the drawing, and he knew he had to call Mark right away to share the news even though it was the middle of the night. Mark said it’s usually not good news when he gets a call like that, but this time there was a great outcome!

The two friends chose the lump-sum option for their prize, receiving $390,000 before taxes.