Now that our holiday-themed scratch games have hit store shelves for the year, we’ve gotten a couple player questions about the number of prizes available in them and the odds of winning those prizes. I always tell people that lottery players pay attention to detail – and our player mail has proven that point!
One player noticed that holiday games don’t have as many top prizes as our regular games and wondered why. That’s because our holiday-themed games by design will only be on the market for a short period of time while many of our other games are sold for a year or more.
We order smaller quantities of tickets in our holiday games, which means there will be a smaller number of prizes involved. The key point, however, is that the odds of winning in our holiday-themed games are in line with those in our other games, and that’s what matters when it comes to the chance of winning a prize.
“Crossword” games are a perennial favorite for scratch players, so let’s compare the “$30,000 Holiday Crossword” game that’s available right now with the “Bonus Crossword” game. They’re both $3 versions of Crossword, and they have the same overall odds of winning: about 1 in 3.52.
That’s also the case with the $2 “Nutcracker Bingo” holiday game and the $2 “Wild Bingo” game. The overall odds of winning are the same in both: about 1 in 3.34.
Then there are the folks who tell us they like our non-holiday games and want to see them come back. Well, guess what? They will! Our holiday-themed games will only be on the market until early January, and then our other games will cycle back onto store shelves when the holidays are over.
The folks in our Storm Lake office say that it’s snowing there today, so I guess it IS starting to look like winter in Iowa!
why are the winners in the contest always in eastern iowa there should be winners western iowa to
Posted by: walter klein | October 21, 2019 at 11:54 AM
You idiots at the lottery do realize that is isn't even Halloween yet and you have Christmas tickets out already you should have to wait at least until November to but them out are you going to summer themed one out in January
Posted by: Neal Christianson | October 20, 2019 at 09:46 AM
Hi, Ann. I blogged about that last week in a post about the odds in our holiday games. It comes down to an issue of space, in that there are only so many slots for games in our dispenser and our self-service kiosks, so at the holiday times, our "regular games" are cycled out and our holiday games replace them for the holiday season. Our regular games will come back onto the market in mid-January. Here is a link to that blog post, if you would like to read it: https://www.ialotteryblog.com/2019/10/player-mail-what-about-the-odds-in-your-holiday-games.html
Posted by: Mary Neubauer | October 17, 2019 at 04:11 PM
Why is 442 suspended during Holiday games?
Posted by: Ann ASQUITH | October 17, 2019 at 01:56 PM
I uaed to work for Disney I tell everyone to make their day happy
Hakuna Matata it's from Lion King
Have a good day
Posted by: Susan Green | October 16, 2019 at 09:53 PM