Player Comments In the Middle Of The Night: Your Mobile App Isn’t Working

We’ve heard this week from some players who were having trouble in the middle of the night using the lottery’s mobile app to check their tickets or enter them into promotions. They told us that our app needed to be fixed.

But it’s actually working as it should. There’s just a period of time each night when the app is offline. If you try to use an app function that’s unavailable at that time, you’ll get a message asking you to try again later.

Many of the mobile app’s functions are tied into the lottery’s central gaming system, which links all Iowa Lottery terminals and self-service kiosks in real time along with some functions on the app.

As part of the lottery’s security procedures, the central gaming system is taken offline each night at midnight so that sales from the previous day can be balanced, all plays can be accounted for, and system updates can be made.

When the lottery’s statewide gaming system is offline, ticket checking doesn’t work on the mobile app because that function needs to access the gaming system. And lotto tickets (in Powerball®, Mega Millions®, etc.) can’t be entered into promotions at that time for the same reason.

Tickets in scratch games and InstaPlay games can be entered into promotions when the gaming system is offline because the process for those products is slightly different.

Some nights, the central gaming system is offline for less than half an hour. Other nights when bigger updates need to be made, the system may be offline for a few hours.

We choose to take the gaming system offline just after midnight knowing that’s when foot traffic is lighter in retail locations and there are fewer online visits to our website and mobile app.

So if you’re trying to use the lottery’s mobile app between about midnight and 3 a.m. and you get a message asking you to try again later, please do that. The app’s functions will be live again once the central gaming system is brought back up.

Comments

[Mary Neubauer]

Hi, Harley. Please be sure that your device is running the most up-to-date version of the app. An app update was released earlier this year by our app vendor to address the issue some Android users reported with the check-ticket function. For some players, the issue went away as soon as they updated the app on their devices. Others found success by following the steps below in this order:

Clear App Cache of LotteryPlus App, delete the LotteryPlus App, fully Power Off the phone. Wait 5 mins. Restart the phone, install the LotteryPlus App from the Google Play store, give it another try.

[Harley]

When I'm checking tickets with the app, it will freeze after one or two or three tickets are scanned. I have to kill it and it will work for one or two more tickets, maybe. I even tried deleting it and reinstalling it from Google Play.