ialottery blog

Powerball® Double Play® Promo = Chance to win tickets to Iowa Speedway® and 2024 NASCAR Championship Weekend™

Iowa Powerball® players now have a chance to win exclusive trackside prize packages to this summer’s NASCAR® races at Iowa Speedway® AND the 2024 NASCAR Championship Weekend™ races at Phoenix Raceway!

The Iowa Lottery’s promotion featuring the “Summer NASCAR Race Weekend at Iowa Speedway” opened for entries this morning. Players can enter the promotion with any Powerball ticket with the Double Play option added (minimum $3 play) purchased in Iowa from Feb. 18 through the end of the promotion’s entry period on the morning of June 19.

Up for grabs on the promotion’s first drawing date on May 7 are 215 ticket prize packages for NASCAR Race Weekend at Iowa Speedway in June! Tickets to the NASCAR Cup Series™ race at Iowa Speedway are SOLD OUT, so this promotion gives you the chance to win tickets to one of the summer’s hottest events!

Players will select the race date of their choice when they enter the promotion.

The promotion’s second drawing date on June 20 offers a trip prize package to NASCAR Championship Weekend™ in November at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Ariz., as well as 20 other qualifying spots in the national NASCAR Powerball Playoff promotion that ultimately will award four additional trips to the championship race weekend and a $1 million prize.

First up in the promotion are ticket prize packages to all three NASCAR races this summer at Iowa Speedway. Some of those ticket packages are for single-day grandstand seats, some are for single-day VIP Suite Experiences, and some are for 3-day grandstand seat packages for the entire weekend of racing!

For the ARCA Menards Series™ race on June 14, the NASCAR Xfinity Series™ race on June 15, and the NASCAR Cup Series™, Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol race on June 16, we’re giving away 50 grandstand ticket packages and 15 VIP Suite packages for each day of racing. In addition, we’re giving away 20 grandstand ticket packages for all three days of races!

The winners of those prize packages will all be selected in the promotion drawings on May 7 (from entries accepted through 9:59 a.m. May 6).

Each single-day VIP Suite Experience ticket prize package to Iowa Speedway includes:

• 2 suite tickets
• complimentary food, soda and water at the suite
• a guided garage tour
• pace car ride for 2 on the track
• preferred parking at Iowa Speedway
• merchandise swag bag with branded clothing items.

Each single-day grandstand ticket prize package to Iowa Speedway includes:

• 4 grandstand admission tickets
• general parking in Iowa Speedway lots
• merchandise swag bag.

Each three-day Race Weekend grandstand ticket prize package to Iowa Speedway includes:

• 2 grandstand admission tickets for all 3 days of races
• general parking in Iowa Speedway lots
• merchandise swag bag.

Then in the promotion drawing on June 20 (from entries accepted through 9:59 a.m. June 19), we’ll select the winners of prize packages to attend the NASCAR Championship Weekend™ at Phoenix Raceway. That day, we’ll select the winner of a trip for two to the 2024 NASCAR Championship Weekend™!

The NASCAR Championship Weekend™ at Phoenix Raceway ticket prize package includes:

• 2 grandstand admission tickets at Phoenix Raceway for the NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship™ race on Nov. 9 AND the NASCAR Cup Series Championship™ race on Nov. 10
• round-trip coach airfare from the winner’s closest primary airport to Phoenix Sky Harbor airport
• 3-night double-occupancy hotel stay in downtown Phoenix
• round-trip deluxe motorcoach transfer between hotel and track
• 2-day Hospitality Lounge access at the track
• 2-day Infield Experience pass at the track
• event program, scanner rental, and swag bag with branded merchandise
• $750 spending money paid in a check from the Iowa Lottery.

In addition on June 20, we’ll select the 20 Iowa Lottery qualifiers for the national NASCAR Powerball Playoff promotion that ultimately will award four trips to the 2024 NASCAR Championship Weekend™ at Phoenix Raceway where one of the finalists will win $1 million. All 20 of the Iowa Lottery’s qualifiers will receive an initial $1,000 prize and have the chance to win even more!

Powerball players in 25 participating states can enter the NASCAR Powerball Playoff this spring and summer. Each state lottery will initially hold a drawing to determine its qualifiers in the national promotion. Then from among all those qualifiers across the country, 16 national semifinalists will be selected.

Each of the 16 semifinalists will win a cash prize. The number of semifinalists will continue to be whittled down until just four finalists remain. The longer a semifinalist stays in the running, the more they’ll win.

Each of the four finalists will win a VIP prize package to the 2024 NASCAR Championship Weekend. During a live drawing with Powerball broadcast from Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 10, one of the four finalists will win a $1 million prize.

Here is the schedule of drawings in the NASCAR Powerball Playoff:

Prize Amount	Winners	Date	Winners Announced	Impact
$1 million + trip to Arizona	1	Nov. 10	NASCAR race Nov. 10 in Avondale, AZ	1 grand-prize winner selected
$10,000 + trip to Arizona	3	Nov. 10	NASCAR race Nov. 10 in Avondale, AZ	4 finalists attend race
$7,500	4	Oct. 17	NASCAR race Nov. 3 in Martinsville, VA	Semifinalists narrowed to 4
$5,000	4	Oct. 3	NASCAR race Oct. 13 in Concord, NC	Semifinalists narrowed to 8
$2,500	4	Sept. 12	NASCAR race Sept. 21 in Bristol, TN	Semifinalists narrowed to 12
Selection of semifinalists	16	Aug. 13	NASCAR race Sept. 1 in Darlington, SC	16 semifinalists selected

As with past Powerball promotions in Iowa, each eligible ticket entered into the NASCAR Powerball Playoff promotion with Iowa Lottery will count as one entry, regardless of the purchase price of the ticket or the number of plays on it.

Entries not selected by the Iowa Lottery in the NASCAR Powerball Playoff promotion drawings on May 7 will remain eligible for the promotion’s second drawing date on June 20. Players can win only one prize for each race day. Winners of the three-day Race Weekend Package at Iowa Speedway cannot win another grandstand admission package or a VIP Suite Experience.

NASCAR, LLC, Iowa Speedway, LLC, Phoenix Speedway, LLC, d/b/a Phoenix Raceway, Comcast Cable, LLC, and Menards, Inc., are not sponsors of this promotion.

NASCAR®, NASCAR Cup Series Championship Weekend™ and NASCAR Cup Series™ are trademarks of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC, and used with expressed permission. ARCA Menards Series™ word mark is used under license by the Automobile Racing Club of America, LLC, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC, and Menards, Inc. NASCAR Xfinity Series™ word mark is used under license by the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC, and Comcast Cable, LLC. All rights reserved.

Phoenix Raceway® and its logo are registered trademarks of Phoenix Speedway, LLC, and are used with permission.

Iowa Speedway® is a registered trademark of Iowa Speedway, LLC.

Unclaimed Powerball Prize of $2 Million Hits Halfway Point

An unclaimed $2 million PowerbalI® prize in Iowa has hit the halfway point.

It’s been three months since a player who bought their ticket at a Clinton store won the prize, and there are now three months until the prize expiration date.

If you’ve got a ticket you haven’t checked yet, now is the time!

The unclaimed $2 million prize was won in the Powerball drawing on Saturday, Nov. 25. The winning ticket was purchased at Clinton Liquor, 1641 S. Bluff Blvd. in Clinton. The ticket came within one number of winning that night’s $337.9 million Powerball jackpot.

The ticket initially matched the first five numbers but missed the Powerball to win a $1 million prize. But whoever bought the ticket also added the Power Play® option to the purchase, which multiplies the prize at the Match 5 level to $2 million. The Clinton ticket was the only one in the country to win a $2 million prize that night.

The winning numbers in the Nov. 25 Powerball drawing were: 27-33-63-66-68 and Powerball 9. The Power Play number was 2.

Clinton Liquor received a $2,000 bonus from the Iowa Lottery for selling the $2 million-winning ticket.

Powerball prizes won in Iowa today must be claimed within 180 days of the drawing, so the expiration date for the $2 million prize is May 23, 2024.

Prizes of $2 million have to be claimed at Iowa Lottery headquarters in Clive. The lottery’s offices are open Monday through Friday, and appointments are strongly encouraged for those claims.

To make an appointment or contact the lottery with questions, winners are welcome to call us at 515-725-7900 or email us at [email protected].

You may recall that in September of last year, a $1 million Mega Millions® prize won in Ames expired without being claimed. We rolled the money from that prize into the lottery’s Million Dollar Holiday promotion that ended in January. Iowans from across the state won prizes in that promotion's drawings, including an Allison woman who won the grand prize of $500,000.

We’ll keep sending out updates about this prize if it's still unclaimed as the deadline draws closer!

In His Excitement, This $500,000 Winner Initially Left His Ticket In The Store!

A New Hampton man says he was calm today as he claimed a $500,000 lottery prize. But he admits that was definitely not the case when he first realized he’d won big!

Kevin Frey says he was so thrown off by his win that he left his winning ticket behind in the store. He was out in his car, calling and texting his family with the news, when one of his adult children asked him to send a photo of the winning ticket. That’s when he realized he didn’t have it.

Frey says he ran back into the store and asked the clerk for the ticket. She also had been so flustered, she just put it down beside the lottery terminal. Frey says they finally got on the right page!

Frey is 64 and a long-time New Hampton pastor. He bought his winning ticket at Casey’s, 615 N. Linn Ave. in New Hampton and claimed the 8th of 14 top prizes in the "$500,000 Ca$h" scratch game. 

So why did his son want to see a picture of the winning ticket? Frey admits that his children know he can tell a pretty good tale. But in this case, the tall tale was true!

Frey says that he and his wife, Marian, have talked about moving to the Des Moines area when they retire to be closer to family, and his lottery win will help with that along with other long-term plans and investments. He says it will be fun to share some of their winnings with family and to support the charities to which they’ve made donations for years.

Frey says he was able to lead church services on Sunday as if nothing was out of the ordinary – and those in the congregation said he did a nice job on the sermon!

SNEAK PEEK: Powerball® + NASCAR® Winning Moments Are Returning This Year To Iowa!

You bet Iowa will be part of these 2024 NASCAR® moments!

Check back with us on Tuesday, Feb. 27, for full details about how YOU can have a chance to be in on it!

And starting this Sunday (Feb. 18), save the Iowa tickets you buy for Powerball with the Double Play® option added! They’ll be what you need to get in on the action.

 

NASCAR, LLC, Phoenix Speedway, LLC d/b/a Phoenix Raceway, and NASCAR Enterprises, LLC are not sponsors of this promotion. NASCAR® is a registered trademark of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC. All trademarks are used with permission by their respective owners. All Rights Reserved.

Truth or Myth: My odds get better if I buy several tickets in a row without winning

A player just asked us a question that involves an age-old myth when it comes to playing the lottery: Do my odds get better if I buy several tickets in a row without winning?

The short answer is no. But here are the full details:

The odds of winning in lottery games are based solely on random chance. Nothing else.

The outcome of one particular ticket has no impact on the outcome of an upcoming play. And no one -- not even those of us who work at the lottery or the retailers that sell our tickets -- can predict when or where the next big winner will hit.

The concept that "you're due for a win" doesn't apply. And there’s only one formula that works when it comes to playing the lottery: You have to buy a ticket to have a chance to win.

In a lotto game like Powerball® or Mega Millions®, the odds of winning are based upon all the different ways you can combine the numbers available to make a play. For example, in Powerball, the odds of winning the jackpot are about 1 in 292.2 million because that’s how many ways you can combine the numbers.

In scratch games, InstaPlay games and pull-tab games, the odds of winning are based upon the number of winning tickets in a game vs. the total number of tickets in that game.

If the overall odds of winning in a scratch game are about 1 in 3.41, that does not mean that if you buy 4 tickets in a row, one of them will automatically win a prize. Rather, it means that if you were to buy all of the tickets available in that game, about 1 in 4 of them would win a prize, with winning tickets randomly distributed throughout the game.

(And remember that there are thousands if not millions of tickets in our scratch, InstaPlay and pull-tab games, enough to fill up the shelves in a warehouse.)

We keep lots of Truth vs. Myth tips on our website to help you be a well-informed player. Check out our Play Smart, Be Informed details to learn more!

These lucky Iowa winners just got back from a private concert by Luke Combs!

Talk about perfect timing!

Ten Iowa Lottery winners and their guests just got back from an exclusive trip to Nashville to attend a private concert by Luke Combs. You know him – the country star generating headlines for one of the most heartwarming performances at last weekend’s Grammy Awards?!

The lucky Iowans who got to see Combs in concert this week won their Nashville trip in our “Living Lucky with Luke Combs” promotion last year. The trip had been scheduled out well in advance to give winners plenty of time to get the event on their calendars.

As it turns out, they got to see Combs live on stage just days after his touching Grammy performance with Tracy Chapman!

The photos in this blog entry show our Iowa winners having an incredible getaway in Nashville. And, two of our winners from the trip have an even bigger story to tell.

Ashley Cole of Bettendorf was selected as a $10,000 prize winner as part of the concert, and Brad Scott of Marion won a private meet-and-greet with Combs.

I think we’re all having a “totally jealous” moment right now!

You may recall that we released the “Living Lucky with Luke Combs” scratch game in March of last year. And at the same time, we announced our Luke Combs promotion that offered as prizes 10 trips to Nashville for the private concert by the country star at the iconic Ryman Auditorium.

During the concert, a $10,000 prize winner was selected from Iowa and each of the other lotteries that sent players to Nashville. In addition, a grand-prize winner of $500,000 was selected at the event. A man from Texas took home that prize.

The trip winners got to tour the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum, enjoy a private Taste of Nashville dinner at the top of a downtown Nashville hotel, and received custom Luke Combs swag bags.

Congratulations again to our winners! It’s been so fun to see the highlights of your trip!

I’m a snowbird, can I use my VIP Club free play where I am for the winter?

Here’s a question we just got from a member of our VIP Club who’s enjoying warmer weather for the winter. Other folks may also be out of state at times and have the same question.

The woman said she’s a snowbird currently in Florida, and she wondered if while she’s there she can use the free lottery play she gets each month for being a member of the Iowa Lottery’s VIP Club.

The short answer is no, but here’s the background involved:

We send free plays by email to our VIP Club members each month, and in this instance, the woman was checking her email from another state. We’re all often on the go these days, so we understand that you may check your email from many different places.

But in the case of our free plays, they can only be redeemed at lottery retail locations in Iowa. The free play is from the Iowa Lottery, not a lottery in another state.

From an operational perspective, lottery terminals outside of Iowa can’t redeem our free plays because they’re not programmed to read them. And from a cost perspective, we’re not asking another lottery to cover the expense of the free plays we send out. That wouldn’t be very neighborly of us!

So please know that we’ll continue to send our VIP Club members free plays each month. It’s a thank you from us to show our appreciation for you as a lottery player. You can redeem your free play anywhere in Iowa that lottery tickets are sold!