We decided to kick off 2019 by trying out a new way to highlight the biggest prizes claimed in Iowa. So now that January has come to a close, here’s the map we’ve been working on for the past month! This shows all of the lottery prizes of $600 or more that were claimed in January.
It was fun to see these 427 dots filling in across the state as the month went on!
And as you’ll see from the patterns involved, something that we’ve often said about prize wins holds true: 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! (Check out our video about how lottery odds work if you have questions about that.)
The details from this map also is kept on our website in the winner’s list of $600 or more from the past year. That list is updated monthly, so check it out if you prefer to see the info. in that format.
Click here for a direct link to this map in an interactive format that you can click through to 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!
If more than one big prize was won at a particular location, they’re each shown on the list. And I’ll note that this map only shows those big prizes that were claimed in January. It doesn’t include prizes that haven’t been claimed yet. For example, we know there are two $1 million prizes out there – one in Nevada and the other in Colfax – that are still unclaimed. Click here to see the unclaimed prizes list on our website.
Comments