ialottery blog

Lucky Clovers Have Sprouted Here At The Lottery

 

 

When you drive up to lottery headquarters, you’ll notice some shiny new clovers on the grounds around the building! There are 15 of them in all, and they’re part of the Art in State Buildings project we’ve been working on for about a year.

The metal sculptures were designed by Des Moines artists TJ Moberg and Dennis Reynolds. As soon as we saw their idea, we thought: lottery luck!

The clovers range in size from 12 inches up to 5 feet in diameter. Moberg and Reynolds selected a variety of materials and finishes that bring additional depth of meaning to the project.

We think the end result is an installation that tells not only the lottery’s story, but that of Iowa as well.

Nearly 3,800 Reasons Our New Promo Is Making People Smile

I gave you the details Monday about the "30-Day Ticket Giveaway," our new promotion marking the lottery's 30th anniversary. And I'll bet you're wondering: Has anyone heard the "Player Bonus" sound yet and gotten a free ticket?

The answer is definitely yes! A whole bunch of somebodys have, as a matter of fact!

Through the end of the day yesterday, we'd given away nearly 3,800 free plays in All or Nothing^™, Hot Lotto^® and Mega Millions^®. One of the excited folks who got a free play sent us a photo of it on Facebook, as you can see here. We've also heard from retailers who were excited to have heard the new jingle sounding for players in their stores.

So, happy playing! There are still plenty of days to go in this promotion. Do you think YOU'LL hear the player bonus before it's done?   

The Latest Way You Can Join In Our Big Celebration

Our celebration of the Iowa Lottery’s 30th birthday is amping up again today, this time focusing on lotto players, since our promotion earlier this summer focused on scratch games.

The “30-Day Ticket Giveaway” started this morning, giving players in the Mega Millions^®, Hot Lotto^® and All or Nothing™ games the chance to win a free easy-pick play when they make a purchase. Here’s how it works:

When a player buys a ticket in one of those three games and their ticket is the 30th sold statewide in that same game, the lottery terminal will play a special “Surprise! Player Bonus!” sound and then automatically print a fee, $1 easy-pick ticket for the next drawing in that game. It’s that simple and it’s FREE!

This special offer began at the start of business this morning and continues until 11:59 p.m. central time on Tuesday, Sept. 22.

Please note that the free ticket applies to the 30th ticket sold in each of those games statewide, not at one particular location. So have fun with it and be listening for the Player Bonus recording from the terminal!

Flashback Friday!

We’re taking a trip down memory lane right now, flashing back to 1985. Tomorrow marks 30 years since lottery tickets made their debut in Iowa!  

It was back on Aug. 22, 1985, that things got started with a kick-off celebration at the Iowa State Fair. We just found some old pictures from that day, so check them out! I’ve always been told it was a rainy day, and I think these shots do a good job of capturing it. Wet weather obviously didn’t stop people from standing in long lines to buy our state’s first lottery tickets.

I love the middle shot: Don’t have a table where you can play your lottery tickets? No problem, the shoulder of the person beside you will do!

We started our anniversary celebration earlier this year with our “30 Somethings” scratch game and promotion. And we’re not done yet. Check back here on Monday for details about the newest way you can get in on the fun.

 

Bush, Clinton … and the Lottery?

Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state, now has a different Bush-Clinton pairing than the others you might be thinking of: They’re lottery winners.

I blogged about one of the winners last week: He’s William Clinton of Cedar Rapids, who claimed a top prize of $100,000 in our “Vegas Game Book” scratch game. He won the fourth of eight top prizes in that $20 game.

And then yesterday, Dusty Bush of Des Moines claimed a $30,000 prize after being selected as the grand-prize winner in our “30 Somethings” promotion. Dusty doesn’t take credit for his big win, though. He says his wife, Manila, is the lucky one. It turns out they’re a team when it comes to enteringtickets into their VIP Club account. Dusty says he doesn’t type, so Manila enters their tickets into lottery drawings – and he says she brings them luck in the process.

Dusty predicts they’ll be back at the lottery soon when they win Powerball^®. We’ll have to wait and see if that comes true!

Bush, Clinton and Iowa. Who would have guessed?!

 

And The Final 31 Winners Are …

We’ve got 31 winners to announce today in our “30 Somethings” promotion -- the final round of 30 winners PLUS the grand-prize winner of $30,000!

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer: Congrats to Dusty Bush of Des Moines, who has won the promo’s grand prize. 

Click here to see the entire list of today’s winners and find out who’s a nerdy 30, a flirty 30 or a verde 30! (All the winners from the previous two drawings are also on the results page.)    

Thanks for playing and being part of our 30th anniversary fun!

 

 

 

The Latest Round Of Winners Are …

We held the drawings today to determine the second set of 30 winners in our “30 Somethings” promotion. Now there’s one more round to go on Aug. 3 -- plus the grand-prize drawing that same day. We can’t forget that!

Click here to see today’s list of winners and find out who’s a wordy 30, a dirty 30 or a verde 30! (The 30 winners from our June 4 drawing also are on that page.)    

Remember that any entry you make in the promotion through 11:59 a.m. on July 30 also counts as an entry into the grand-prize drawing.

Thanks for playing and being part of our 30th anniversary fun!

 

And The Winners Are ...

It’s time for the big reveal!

We held the drawings today to determine the first 30 winners in our “30 Somethings” promotion that’s part of the lottery’s 30th anniversary celebration. Click here to see the winners list and find out who’s a curdy 30, a birdie 30 or a verde 30! Maybe YOUR name is on the list! 

And remember, today’s drawing is just getting things started. We’ve got two more drawings to go in the promotion for another 60 prizes in July and August leading up to the grand-prize drawing for a $30,000 winner on Aug. 3. Any entry you make in the promotion through 11:59 a.m. on July 30 also counts as an entry in the grand-prize drawing.

Thanks for playing and being part of our anniversary fun!

Takin' It To The Streets

We blogged last month about our 30th anniversary, and now we’re taking the celebration to the streets!

We’ll hold 30 events across Iowa this summer to spread the fun and thank you for being part of what makes our state so great! Check out the list of events we keep on our promotions page to see where we’ll head next. We’ll add more events as the summer goes along, so if you don’t see a stop in your area yet, check back. We may get it on the list.

We’ll have a lottery tent at most of these events, so if you find the tent like you see here, you’re probably in the right place!

Tons Of Winner News Today!

We have so much winner news to talk about today! Over the holiday weekend, someone who bought a ticket in Ankeny won the $100,000 top prize in All or Nothing™. But the expiration date is coming up for two Powerball® prizes in Council Bluffs and Waukon.  

The top prize in All or Nothing was won in Sunday’s evening drawing with a ticket that didn’t match any of the numbers that night. The lucky ticket was purchased at Mills Fleet Farm, 4275 S.E. Delaware Ave. in Ankeny.

The winning numbers in that night’s drawing were: 1-3-6-7-9-10-11-12-17-18-21-24. The lucky winner or winners can claim the prize at one of the Iowa Lottery’s offices – either at its headquarters in Clive or one of its regional offices in Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, Mason City or Storm Lake.

The two Powerball prizes that are nearing expiration are for $10,000 and $20,000. They’ll expire next month if they’re not claimed in time.

The $10,000 prize was won in Council Bluffs in the Powerball drawing on June 18, 2014, with a ticket purchased at Casey’s, 1030 Veterans Memorial Highway. It came close to winning that night’s $50 million jackpot, matching four of the first five numbers and the Powerball to win a $10,000 prize. The winning numbers were: 6-9-29-52-59 and Powerball 7. The Power Play® number was 3.

The winner or winners of that prize have until the close of business at 4 p.m. on June 18 to claim the prize at a lottery office.

The $20,000 prize was won in Waukon in the Powerball drawing on June 28, 2014, with a ticket purchased at Quillin’s Food Ranch, 9 Ninth St. S.W. That ticket also matched four of the first five numbers and the Powerball. But whoever bought the ticket also added the Power Play, which multiplied the prize to $20,000. The winning numbers in that night’s $80 million jackpot drawing were: 8-12-34-43-56 and Powerball 9. The Power Play was 2.     The winner or winners of that prize have until the close of business at 4 p.m. on June 29 to claim the prize at a lottery office.

In our last fiscal year, nearly $1.4 million in prizes expired without being claimed in Iowa lotto games. The money from unclaimed prizes in Iowa goes into our prize pools for future games and promotions, so it will be used to pay prizes, just not those prizes that have expired

Man Claims $1 Million Prize After Ticket Almost Trashed

 

He had already left the store and was driving away when a Des Moines man realized he didn’t have the ticket he’d just been told had won a $1 million Powerball^® prize. The story has a happy ending, but, whew! It was a close call.

The Way Things Were ...

As I was pulling together details for Monday’s announcement about the lottery’s 30th anniversary, the very first lottery tickets in Iowa caught my eye, in terms of how different things look today!

Here’s a picture to show what I’m talking about – check out “Scratch, Match & Win” compared to today’s games! Even the smallest tickets we have on the market today are much bigger than those in Scratch, Match & Win, which made its debut back on Aug. 22, 1985. It takes five tickets in that game to match up with those in a lot of our games today.

And the world has apparently become a lot more colorful through the years, too. (In reality, I think printing techniques have just improved a lot since 1985, but it IS interesting to see how far things have come.)

Can’t wait to see what lottery tickets will look like 30 years from now!

We’re Turning 30 – And Celebrating With A New Game & Promotion

Time really does fly! The Iowa Lottery is turning 30 this year, so I’m using today’s blog entry to take a look back and see what how it’s all added up.

Legislation authorizing a lottery in Iowa was signed into law on April 18, 1985, and Iowa Lottery sales began with a kick-off celebration on Aug. 22, 1985, at the Iowa State Fair. But did you know that the push for a lottery in our state goes back a lot further than that?

It was in 1972, the same year that we put Iowa in the win column for President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign, that Iowans voted by greater than a 2-to-1 margin to amend the state Constitution to repeal a lottery prohibition.   

Through the years, the lottery has created life-changing moments for prize winners, provided valuable help in the form of sales commissions to the thousands of Iowa businesses that sell lottery tickets, and raised significant proceeds for the state causes that benefit all Iowans.

There’s been an interesting constant that entire time: An instant-scratch game was the first product offered by the Iowa Lottery back in 1985, and scratch tickets are still our top-selling product today. In fiscal year 2014, scratch tickets accounted for 60 percent of lottery sales, lotto games made up 35 percent of sales, and pull-tab games were 5 percent of annual sales.

To celebrate our 30th birthday, today we’re launching the “30 Somethings” game. It’s a $5 scratch game tied to a promotion by the same name. Understanding today’s emphasis on “green” products, tickets in the 30 Somethings game are printed on paper stock made from 60 percent recycled fibers (35 percent post-consumer). You’ll notice the tickets’ unique look and feel – they’re a lot like brown sack paper used for things like grocery bags or lunch sacks.

Nonwinning tickets in the 30 Somethings game can be entered in a Play It Again promotion offering a total of 91 prizes, including a grand prize of $30,000. The promotion just started at noon today and concludes with a grand-prize drawing on Aug. 3.

Here is a look by the numbers at 30 years of lottery history in Iowa (figures current through March 31, 2015, unless otherwise noted):

• $6.3 billion   Total Iowa Lottery sales

• $3.4 billion   Total prizes won by Iowa Lottery players

• $1.6 billion   Total lottery proceeds to Iowa causes

• $474.7 million Total lottery sales commissions paid to Iowa businesses that sell lottery tickets

• $241 million   Largest lottery prize won in Iowa to date. The Shipping 20, a group of co-workers from the Quaker Oats plant in Cedar Rapids, claimed that Powerball® jackpot on June 20, 2012.

• 6.4 million  Number of lottery tickets sold during the lottery’s first week of sales

• 2,391 Number of retail locations in Iowa that sell lottery tickets (current as of April 30, 2015)

• 1,570 Number of Iowa Lottery tickets that have won prizes of $100,000 or more (through April 2015)

• 127  Number of Iowa Lottery tickets that have won prizes of $1 million or more (through April 2015)

• 900  Number of instant-scratch games sold in Iowa from 1985 through present

• 237   Number of pull-tab games sold in Iowa from the product’s introduction in 1987 through present

• 19 Number of lotto games sold in Iowa from the product’s introduction in 1986 through present   

• 9 Number of Hot Lotto® jackpots won by Iowa Lottery players to date

• 8 Number of Powerball jackpots won by Iowa Lottery players to date