ialottery blog

A Milk Run With More: Errand Ends With $10,000 Lottery Prize

There’s something about the every-day aspect of this story, especially during these unusual times, that brings a smile. A southeast Iowa couple has taken home a $10,000 prize from a lottery scratch ticket purchased during a milk run.

Heather Love of Morning Sun claimed the prize earlier this week. She said that her husband, Nick, bought the ticket when he stopped at a local convenience store for milk on the way home from work. She said that Nick rarely buys scratch tickets but decided to get one that day in the “$100,000 Mega Crossword” game.

Heather said she was the one who scratched the ticket later that night after dinner. She thought they’d won big, but said it didn’t really start to sink in until she scanned the ticket on the lottery’s mobile app and it displayed the message: "Congratulations, you won $10,000!"

She said that she and Nick argued good-naturedly over which one of them would actually claim the prize, but agreed that they would use the winnings to buy new carpet and flooring for their home.

Heather said that winning a big prize “kind of makes your heart flutter.” She said she has often heard about people winning the lottery, but now it’s real to her.

Congratulations, Heather and Nick! Thank you for giving us a smile with your story!

I Think I Won That Game’s Top Prize, But The Ticket Results Say I'm Wrong

I blogged last week about player questions for one of our new scratch games, and now we’re hearing from players about another one.

This time, the questions are about the “Lucky Stars” scratch game that hit the market this month. Multiple players have contacted us who all thought they won the game’s top prize of $30,000. But as it turns out, they hadn’t uncovered all of the stars required to win that amount.

Here’s the background:

As its name implies, the $3 Lucky Stars game has a solar-system theme, with artwork on the tickets showing planets and constellations in outer space. There are star symbols in the play area on each ticket, and if you match the number shown in a particular star, you can scratch it off. If you scratch off all of the star numbers in the same path, you win the prize shown for that path.

Lucky Stars is designed so the star paths on the ticket follow bending lines, like the constellations in the night sky. And, the number of stars you need to match increases with the prize amount involved.

For example, to win the game’s $5 prize, you only have to match two stars. But to win $200, you have to match six stars. And to win the game’s top prize of $30,000, you have to match seven stars.

And remember, the star paths are not straight lines! The paths are highlighted on the ticket with double purple lines that you can follow from star to star.

The players who contacted us all thought they won $30,000. But they’d only matched the first five numbers in that path. They didn’t match the final two stars in the line.

So if you play Lucky Stars, remember to look for ALL the stars in the path to win a particular prize.

Player Comment: I Should Be Able To Win With A Different Symbol

One of our newest scratch games has prompted comments from some players who thought they should be able to win with a different symbol on their tickets than the actual winning symbols.

The bottom-line answer is that only the winning symbols will bring you a prize in the game. But here’s the full background involved:

The players’ comments have been about the “Joker’s Wild” scratch game that just hit the market this month. There are 15 prize spots in the play area on each Joker’s Wild ticket, and you scratch them off to see if you’ve won.

As its name indicates, Joker’s Wild has a card-game theme. If you uncover the joker card in one of the prize spots on your ticket, you’ll win the prize shown for that spot.

If you uncover the cherry card, you’ll win 10X the prize shown. And if you uncover the money bag card, you’ll win all 15 prizes on your ticket.

The amount you can win on a ticket ranges from $5 up to $50,000.

What Some Players Are Saying

Each of the symbols in the play area on a Joker’s Wild ticket is identified with both an image and letters underneath it. For example, the queen card shows both the Q symbol and the identifying letters of QUN. The three card has the numeral 3 with the letters THR, and so on.

The players’ questions have been about the seven card (7-SVN) and the cherry card (cherry symbol + 10X). Those are highlighted in the image of a Joker’s Wild ticket you can see here.

The players have said they think the cherry symbol looks a bit like a numeral 7 and therefore, they should be able to win a prize with the 7 card their ticket.

But even if you think that the cherry symbol looks like the number 7, the cherry card also has the 10X identifier on it. The 7-SVN card does not.

The 7-SVN card is not a winning symbol in the game. So no, you won’t win a prize with that card on your ticket.

Truth or Myth: Does The Lottery Control Where Winning Scratch Tickets Are Sold?

It’s time for another entry in our Truth vs. Myth series to test your lottery know-how! Here goes: Does the lottery control where winning scratch tickets are sold?

The answer to that is a big ol’ NOPE. That particular belief is definitely a myth. And the mistaken idea unfortunately extends out into other myth-based thoughts like: All the winners are from big cities/small towns/other states/no one from my area ever wins, etc.

The fact is that the odds of winning in lottery games are based solely on random chance.

The outcome of one particular ticket has no impact at all on the outcome of an upcoming ticket. 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. That’s an important part of our security procedures.

Winning tickets are distributed randomly in our scratch games. Maybe a quick way to visualize that is to think about a deck of shuffled cards. Once the deck has been shuffled, there could be three hearts or clubs in a row and then several cards after that in the other two suits. The order becomes random once the cards are shuffled.

It’s the same thing in our games. There could be three winning tickets in a row, and then several nonwinning tickets in a row after that. Now, the size of a scratch game is much, much bigger than a deck of cards, but the same concept applies. (There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of tickets in a scratch game.)

The bottom line is: People all across Iowa – and all across the country – can and do win lottery prizes every day.

Whether you play the lottery or not, we want everyone to have an accurate understanding of how the lottery works. This Truth or Myth series is part of that effort.

This Week Marks 25 YEARS Of ‘Crossword’ Scratch Games In Iowa!

A lottery game that shot to popularity as soon as it debuted in Iowa is marking 25 YEARS on the market this week.

The Iowa Lottery’s first “Crossword” scratch game was released on March 13, 2000. And we’ve had at least one Crossword game on the market every day since then.

While the Iowa Lottery has high expectations for any game we sell, I don’t think we could have imagined what the future would hold for Crossword. It’s now been one of the lottery’s top-selling games for a quarter of a century!

The Design Still Looks The Same

It’s interesting to look back at those first Crossword tickets, which you can see above. They could be among the Crossword games we have on the market today! The design of our Crossword tickets obviously hasn’t changed much because that’s the way players like them! (If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, people!)

What HAS changed is the variety of Crossword games on the market in Iowa at any one time. For years, the Iowa Lottery had just one Crossword game for sale. The first version of Crossword was a $3 game and we stuck with that for a long time.

But then we got brave. We decided to keep a $3 Crossword game out there, but add more. We released a $5 Crossword game, then a $10 Crossword, a $20 Crossword, and a $30 Crossword. Somewhere along the line, we backed up and added a $2 Crossword. And today, we’ve also got a SCRABBLE™ version of the Crossword game!

You Can Choose Your Favorite Today

There currently are 6 Crossword scratch games for sale in stores across the state. They all have different prize structures and some of them have multiple versions of Crossword puzzles on each ticket. What’s universal about them all is that it takes a while to uncover all the letters available – and that’s what players say they like about Crossword.

So, when you see Crossword tickets this week in local stores, wish them a happy 25th birthday! I’m betting Crossword scratch games will celebrate many more birthdays in Iowa!

He’s Going To Ireland: ISU Grad Wins Trip To See The Cyclones Play In Dublin!

Luke Becker (right) is shown with his fiancée, Lauren Kimball, and Tim Atterburg with Cyclone Sports Properties. 

THIS Iowa State grad is going to Ireland to see the Cyclones™ play football in Dublin!

On Tuesday, Luke Becker of Des Moines was selected as the winner of a VIP trip for two to Ireland in the Iowa Lottery’s Dublin Your Luck promotion. The promotion gave away a travel package to Dublin to see Iowa State take on Kansas State in the teams’ 2025 football season opener on Aug. 23 at Aviva Stadium.

Luke, a 2023 Iowa State graduate, claimed his prize on Friday at Iowa Lottery headquarters in Clive. He said he knew he’d entered tickets into the promotion, but still had trouble believing it when an Iowa Lottery staffer called him on Tuesday to say that he was the winner.

Trying To Be Calm At Work

Luke said he was at work in the middle of his office when he learned the news, so he couldn’t yell or have a big reaction. He quietly let his fiancée, Lauren Kimball, and his parents know that he thought he’d won.

Luke said his parents immediately started scouring the Iowa Lottery website and sent him a screenshot showing his name as the promotion winner. That’s when it all really started to sink in.

The Tickets He Entered Were Gifts

Luke said he thinks all the “Cyclone” scratch tickets he entered in the promotion were gifts from his parents or his fiancée’s grandparents, who all wanted he and Lauren to have the chance to go to Ireland.

Luke said the outcome seems just crazy to him. And he knows that without their family members having fun while buying tickets, this wouldn’t be happening.

The lottery’s Dublin Your Luck promotion was open for entries from Dec. 2 through this past Monday, Feb. 10. The lottery held the promotion's drawing on Tuesday and one of Luke’s tickets was selected as the winner out of more than 17,100 entries.

Luke’s plus-one for the trip will be Lauren, a current Iowa State student majoring in education. Lauren said that her great-grandparents immigrated to America from Ireland, her mother studies their family history, and they celebrate their Irish ancestry.

Lauren said she’s pretty sure her parents will be purchasing tickets to the Iowa State game in Dublin so they also can be there!

What’s In The Trip Package

Luke’s travel prize package for two includes airfare, lodging, game tickets to the Iowa St.-Kansas St. football game on Aug. 23, $5,000 spending money and a merchandise pack.

He said he’s sure there will be a thousand things for them to do to pack their time in Dublin, in addition to going to the game.

“Ireland has been on our radar outside of this game for someplace we wanted to visit,” he said. “And so to now have it be a football game in addition to the days there to just tour the city and experience everything local … We’re ready to go when the plane is ready.”

For A Mid-Winter Lift, Let’s Play PAC-MAN!

To help spread smiles this winter and beyond, we’ve got a throw-back to the early days of video games! It’s a scratch ticket with a whole new way to play a classic.

Tickets in our PAC-MAN scratch game have started arriving in stores today and will be available statewide by Friday. Each ticket comes complete with winning fruit symbols, ghosts, those tasty PAC-DOTs and POWER PELLETS, and of course, PAC-MAN himself!

You can win instant prizes from $5 up to $50,000 on a PAC-MAN ticket. And nonwinning tickets in the game can become your entry into our promotion offering cash prizes along with a grand-prize package that features a PAC-MAN standing arcade game.

The PAC-MAN promotion opened this morning and the entries can be made through 9:59 a.m. on April 28.

How To Play A PAC-MAN Ticket

Because the PAC-MAN scratch game mimics the electronic version of the game, it plays differently than our other scratch tickets. You normally may like to scratch off the entire play area on a ticket, but that will confuse things in PAC-MAN.

The video above gives tips on how to play, but here is a recap:

• Start by scratching one of the 3 START positions in the maze on your ticket.
• Then scratch ONLY in the direction of each PAC-MAN symbol uncovered. If you find a fruit symbol on your path, you win the prize shown.
• Then keep scratching in the direction of the arrow by the fruit symbol.
• Follow the path for each of the START positions on your ticket.
• Uncover a ghost on your path and it’s game over for that PAC-MAN!
• If a path ends on 1 of the prize spots, you’ll win the prize amount there!
• You can win multiple times on each ticket.

How The Promotion Works & The Prizes Involved

Nonwinning tickets in the game can be entered into the PAC-MAN promotion for a chance at even more cash prizes and that sweet PAC-MAN arcade prize package!

There are 2 entry periods in the promotion and in each of the initial 2 drawings, we’ll give away 10 prizes of $15,000.

All entries not selected as winners in the initial drawings will remain eligible for the final drawing in late April for the grand prize of $25,000 plus a PAC-MAN package that includes a standing arcade game and barstool!

If you enter each promotion entry period, you could win in all 3 drawings.

Here is a breakdown of the promotion dates:

Entry Period	Drawing Date	Prize	Number of Winners
10 a.m. Feb. 4 - 9:59 a.m. March 17	March 18	$15,000	10
10 a.m. March 17 - 9:59 a.m. April 28	April 29	$15,000	10
10 a.m. Feb. 4 - 9:59 a.m. April 28	April 29	$25,000 + PAC-MAN arcade package	1

PAC-MAN™&©Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.

What Do YOU Call These Tickets?

We asked this question in the lottery's social media contest this month, and the split in the answers tells us to keep asking.

So, we want to know: What do you call the lottery tickets where you scratch off the security coating to see if you’ve won a prize?

Nearly 2,700 people shared their answers during our social media contest Jan. 13-15. Here’s the split:

• Scratch tickets:     50 percent (1,336 answers)
• Scratch-offs:         33 percent (885 answers)
• Scratchers:           17 percent (450 answers)
• Scratch cards:      0.8 percent (21 answers)

A few other people posted comments with even more responses, including: scratchies!

There are 48 U.S. lotteries, and there appear to be nearly that many names for this product, depending on where you live.

We asked the question because we’re curious about what Iowa players say. We don’t want to call our games something that causes confusion or doesn’t mean anything to you.

Under state law, the technical name for the product is “instant ticket” because you can find out instantly if you’ve won a prize. But through the years, that name has fallen by the wayside for more every-day references.

I don’t think we’re wrong to call them scratch tickets, but we may work in the other names from time to time!

Do YOU call those tickets something else?

A Coin Flip, Rolling The Dice, Shuffling The Cards: A Look At What The Odds Mean

Maybe the best way to explain the odds of winning in a lottery game is to compare them to something else entirely. So we made some new videos to do just that.

Let’s start with scratch games. The odds of winning on a scratch ticket are a lot like the outcome of shuffling a deck of cards. There are 4 suits in the deck, but after the cards are shuffled into random order, you can go a lot more than 4 cards in a row without finding a particular suit.

For InstaPlay games, think of the odds like flipping a coin. You’ve got a 50/50 chance that the outcome will be heads or tails, but we all know you can flip a coin several times in a row with only one outcome.

For pull-tab games, the odds can be compared to rolling a dice. You’ve got a 1 in 6 chance of rolling one of the numbers on the dice, but you can roll it time after time without landing on the number you want!

For lotto games – including Powerball® and Mega Millions® – the odds of winning come from the numbers available to play, and all the different ways you can combine them.

We used each of those concepts for the new videos that went live today to explain the odds of winning in our games. Each video is only about a minute long to quickly provide the details involved.

You can find the videos through the links in this blog entry, and we'll also post them on our website.  

Whether you play the lottery or not, we want everyone to have an accurate understanding of how our games work. These new videos are part of that effort.

The One You Look For: Our Annual Holiday Promotion Has Started TODAY!

The lottery promotion we know folks look for each year has opened for entries this morning with more than $1 million in prizes on the line!

Our annual holiday promotion, called “Cash Prizes Are Coming To Town” this year, will have two drawing dates to award 23 cash prizes totaling $1.1 million.

Players can enter the promotion with nonwinning tickets in the 7 holiday-themed scratch games and 2 holiday-themed InstaPlay games available this year in Iowa.

In the promotion’s drawings on Dec. 10 and Jan. 9, the Iowa Lottery will give away 23 cash prizes ranging from $25,000 up to $250,000. There will be an exclusive second-chance drawing for a $100,000 prize from only those ELF tickets entered into the promotion.

Eligible scratch games

• ELF
• Merry Mint Money
• Money Gift
• Shiny & Bright
• Snowfall Money
• Tree-Mendous Crossword
• Winter Winnings

Eligible InstaPlay games

• ELF
• Reindeer Riches

The ELF scratch and InstaPlay games from the Iowa Lottery are licensed by Scientific Games, LLC, and Warner Bros. Discovery Global Experiences.

Players who join or are already members of the lottery’s free VIP Club can enter the promotion with nonwinning tickets in any of the eligible games. The promotion’s entry period runs from today through 9:59 a.m. on Jan. 8.

Details About The Prize Drawings

In the promotion’s first drawing on Dec. 10, the lottery will select the winners of 10 prizes of $25,000 from among entries made by 9:59 a.m. on Dec. 9.

The promotion’s final three drawings will all be held on Jan. 9.
• The first drawing that day will choose the winners of another 10 prizes of $25,000.
• Then the grand-prize drawing will be held to select 2 winners of $250,000.
• After that, the exclusive drawing for a $100,000 prize will be held from among the promotion’s ELF entries.

You can enter tickets on the lottery website or by using our mobile app.

If You Had To Say What The Iowa Lottery’s Most Popular Game Is …

I can answer that in one word: Crossword.

I’m not ignoring any of our other games or the giant jackpots in Powerball® and Mega Millions®. And those DO grab a ton of attention when they climb into the stratosphere. But from a day-to-day sales perspective, it’s Crossword scratch tickets here in Iowa. And it has been for nearly 25 years!

The Iowa Lottery introduced its first Crossword scratch game on March 13, 2000. It immediately leapt to the top of the list among our scratch tickets. We’ve had at least one Crossword game on the market ever since, and Crossword is always among our top games.

Scratch games are the Iowa Lottery’s biggest product category, so that’s really saying something.

DEFINITELY Not Just One Crossword Game Today

The first Crossword game here in Iowa was a $3 ticket, and for years, we stuck with that price point. But over time we branched out, and right now, we've got five Crossword games available:

• 20,000 Crossword, a $2 game
• $30,000 Crossword, a $3 game
• $50,000 Super Crossword, a $5 game
• $100,000 Mega Crossword, a $10 game
• Ruby Red Crossword, a $30 game

And if those aren't enough, we've even varied the theme a bit with the Scrabble™ Crossword Game, a $10 ticket that hit the market in February.   

Players say they like Crossword because it takes time to play. They like uncovering the words on their tickets, even if they don’t win. Not that anyone is turning down the chance to win, but they appreciate the process along the way with Crossword!

We hear you: You can definitely expect that we’ll keep Crossword among our scratch games here in Iowa!

First She Won Big On The Lottery. Now She’s Buying A Motorcycle

Here’s a lottery winner with VERY clear plans for the future! 

She's from southern Iowa and she has no hesitation describing what she's going to get now that she’s won $50,000 playing the lottery. Lisa Johns of Creston is buying a Harley Trike.

Lisa says it will help her remember her late husband, Sterling, and their favorite pastime. She says they were avid motorcycle riders, and when Sterling passed away, she gave his motorcycle to her son as Sterling had wanted.

It’s now been two years, and Lisa says she’s ready to get on the road again! She and Sterling were part of a big group that rode motorcycles, and she says she can’t wait to ride with them again.

Lisa, a retired postmaster, won the first of eight top prizes in the “In The Money” scratch game that just hit store shelves earlier this month. She bought her winning ticket at Casey’s, 403 E. Townline Road in Creston and claimed her prize yesterday at lottery headquarters in Clive.

Congratulations, Lisa! We wish you many happy miles out on the road! 

Player question: Do you have a game just for Halloween? This time, we DO!

It seems like every year as fall gets closer, we’re asked if we’ll have a game just for Halloween. And this year, we do!

Hey, we’re fans, too. And while it doesn’t work out in our game schedule every time, we show Halloween some love whenever we can.

If you haven’t seen it yet, our “Boo Yah Bucks” scratch game is just CUTE. Tickets in it have four smiling monster faces on them. Well, maybe just three, because we’re not sure Frankenstein can actually smile. You decide. :)

Boo Yah Bucks is a $1 ticket and you can win up to $3,000.

And for your calendars: Fall 2024 officially starts on Sunday, Sept. 22, the day of the autumn equinox.

We’re declaring Halloween season open!

New Lottery Promo Offers Chance To Win Tickets With Your Crew To INDYCAR Races + Concerts

Players in 3 Iowa Lottery scratch games have a chance to win tickets in a luxury suite at this summer’s Hy-Vee INDYCAR Race Weekend in Newton!

We’re calling our newest promotion Concerts & Cars with a Crew because the winners won’t just get tickets for themselves for INDYCAR racing and concerts at Iowa Speedway. They’ll win a set of 4 tickets so they can take their favorite crew with them for an exclusive day of fun!

We’re giving away 11 sets of 4 tickets in a VIP suite for each day of the Hy-Vee INDYCAR Race Weekend at Iowa Speedway.

The promotion’s entry period opened this morning and runs through 9:59 a.m. on June 19. We’ll hold the promotion’s drawings on June 20.

First up will be 11 sets of 4 suite tickets with food and full hospitality for the INDYCAR races on July 13 plus – new this year – VIP infield access near the stage for the pre- and post-race concerts. The headline performers that day are Luke Combs and Eric Church.

Then we’ll select the winners of 11 sets of 4 suite tickets with food and full hospitality for the INDYCAR races on July 14 plus VIP infield access near the stage for the post-race concerts. Kelsea Ballerini and Post Malone will both perform after that day’s races.

You can enter the promotion with eligible tickets from any of these $20 scratch games: Lucky 7 Bonus, Lucky Numbers Gamebook and Payline. You’ll select the Race Weekend date of your choice when you make a promotion entry.

Remember that to enter the promotion, you’ll need to join or already be a member of the lottery’s free VIP Club.

Good luck in the promotion, and maybe we’ll see YOU this summer at the INDYCAR Race Weekend!

Celebrating With 2 Repeat Lottery Winners In 2 Days!

Two big winners we’ve met before both came to see us to claim more prizes this week!

First up was Allen Walker of Algona, who claimed a top prize of $300,000 on Tuesday in the “Ruby Red Crossword” scratch game. He also won a $100,000 prize in a different Crossword game in November. Allen bought both of his winning tickets at the Hy-Vee store at 1500 U.S. Highway 169 N. in Algona.

Allen said he had a little trouble figuring out what he’d won on his latest lucky ticket. He knew he had a lot of words on his Ruby Red Crossword ticket, but as he tried to count them, he kept coming up with different numbers. So he got out a notepad and wrote them each down, and then he realized he’d won the game’s top prize!

Allen, a retired veteran, said he plans to invest most of his winnings, but will set some aside for home repairs and to buy a new vehicle.

The day after Allen claimed his prize, we got to again celebrate with Cheryl Singleton of Valley, Neb. Cheryl claimed a total of $29,250 in Pick 4 prizes yesterday. She won her prizes on three different plays for Tuesday’s evening Pick 4 drawing.

Cheryl said the numbers she played – 1-9-2-2 – have a special meaning for her: They represent the year that her great-grandmother was born. She said she plans to put her winnings into savings.

Cheryl also won $36,000 in Pick 4 prizes in a drawing in October. She bought the winning tickets that brought her big wins at two different Casey’s stores in Carter Lake and Council Bluffs.

Congratulations again to Allen and Cheryl! May your lottery luck continue!

Iowa Lottery, Iowa State Fair Celebrate Years Of Partnership With Scratch Game, Promotion & Live Game Show

An internationally acclaimed Iowa event is being celebrated with a new lottery scratch game and promotion offering prizes of up to $5 million and ticket packages to some of the most sought-after performances in the state.

Iowa Lottery CEO Matt Strawn (on the left), Iowa State Fair CEO Jeremy Parsons were joined by Iowa State Fair mascots Fairfield (the blue ribbon) and Rosetta as they made the announcement this afternoon: Tickets in the “Iowa State Fair” scratch game have begun arriving in stores today and will be available statewide by Friday! The $5 tickets feature iconic Iowa State Fair images, including a Ferris wheel, food on a stick, and livestock, all celebrating the Fair’s 2024 theme, Fair Fever.

Players who buy tickets in the Iowa State Fair scratch game have a chance to win instant prizes from $5 up to $50,000. But that’s just the start!

Nonwinning tickets in the game can be entered into the Iowa Lottery’s Fair Fever promotion that began this afternoon and will offer prizes of up to $5 million along with dozens of concert prize packages for performances at the 2024 Iowa State Fair, where the Iowa Lottery is the Grandstand sponsor.

The promotion will conclude with a live lottery game show on opening day of this year’s Iowa State Fair, where 20 contestants will compete for a total of $1 million in guaranteed prizes. The final contestant on the game show will win at least $500,000 and have a chance at a prize of up to $5 million!

The game show will be held Aug. 8 on the Fairgrounds Grand Concourse. Contestants that day will gradually be eliminated through a series of contests, with each competitor winning at least $10,000.

Going All The Way Back to 1985 …

The decades-long relationship between the Iowa State Fair and the Iowa Lottery began 39 years ago on the very first day of lottery ticket sales in Iowa. There was a kick-off celebration on Aug. 22, 1985, at the Iowa State Fair to mark the Iowa Lottery’s inaugural day.

In the mid-1990s, Iowa Lottery proceeds were dedicated for four years to funding capital improvements on the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Among the projects that received lottery funding was the extensive 1997 renovation of the Iowa State Fair Grandstand.

The Iowa Lottery has held many events at the Iowa State Fair through the years, including hosting a Powerball® drawing on the Grand Concourse in 2006. And in recent years, the Iowa Lottery has been the Day of Fair sponsor on the annual Veterans Day at the Iowa State Fair.

How To Enter The Promotion

To enter the Fair Fever promotion, Iowa Lottery players need to join or already be members of the lottery’s free VIP Club. The promotion’s entry period opens this afternoon and runs through 9:59 a.m. on July 16.

There will be two drawing dates in the promotion to select the contestants for the live game show at the Iowa State Fair along with the winners of concert-ticket prize packages for performances at the Iowa State Fair Grandstand.

The Prizes To Win

Up for grabs on the promotion’s first drawing date on June 6 are 27 ticket prize packages for each of these four Grandstand concerts:

• Thursday, Aug. 8: Lauren Daigle with special guest Blessing Offor.
• Friday, Aug. 9: Foreigner Historic Farewell Tour with special guest Melissa Etheridge.
• Saturday, Aug. 10: Jelly Roll with special guest DAX.
• Sunday, Aug. 11: Greta Van Fleet Starcatcher World Tour with special guest The Beaches.

In the promotion’s second drawing date on July 18, the game-show contestants will be selected along with the winners of 27 ticket prize packages for each these five Grandstand concerts:

• Monday, Aug. 12: Brett Young with special guest NEEDTOBREATHE.
• Tuesday, Aug. 13: Thomas Rhett.
• Wednesday, Aug. 14: Mötley Crüe with special guest Pop Evil.
• Friday, Aug. 16: The Avett Brothers with G. Love & Special Sauce.
• Saturday, Aug. 17: Ne-Yo with special guest Eric Bellinger.

There will be 4 ticket-level options available: pit standing area, club seats, Grandstand seats, and VIP spectator deck. Players will select the concert they want to attend and the level of tickets they want to win at the time they enter the promotion.

All concert prize packages will include 2 tickets to the show involved, admission tickets to the Iowa State Fair, parking and $100 spending money from the Iowa Lottery.

MONOPOLY Second-Chance Promotion From The Iowa Lottery Will Award 15 Prizes of $10,000!

Players in two Iowa Lottery games have a chance to win one of 15 cash prizes of $10,000 in a new MONOPOLY-themed promotion that opened for entries this week!

The lottery’s MONOPOLY Second-Chance Promotion opened for entries Wednesday morning. Players can enter it with eligible tickets in the MONOPOLY Game Tokens Progressive InstaPlay game or the MONOPOLY 20X scratch game. Both $5 games debuted in Iowa earlier this month.

Up for grabs in the promotion’s May 30 drawing will be 15 prizes of $10,000 each. A player can enter multiple tickets in the promotion but can win only one prize in the drawing.

To enter the promotion, Iowa Lottery players must join or already be members of the lottery’s free VIP Club. The promotion’s entry period opened this morning and runs through 9:59 a.m. on May 29.

Eligible for the promotion are any nonwinning tickets in the MONOPOLY Game Tokens Progressive InstaPlay game purchased on or after March 20; and any nonwinning MONOPOLY 20X scratch tickets. That scratch game began sales on March 5.

Good luck in the promotion, and maybe we’ll see YOUR name on the winner list from the drawing!

Truth or Myth: With overall odds of 1 in 3.67, if I buy 4 tickets I'm guaranteed to win.

Last month, we asked our first Truth or Myth question to have everyone put their thinking caps on. Now we’re back for another round. This is a good one, and we hear it a lot.

Truth or Myth: If the overall odds of winning in a game are 1 in 3.67, if you buy 4 tickets in a row, 1 of them is guaranteed to win a prize.

That’s a myth.

The overall odds of winning a prize in a scratch, InstaPlay or pull-tab game apply to each ticket purchased in that game, not a series of tickets. So, if a game has overall odds of winning of about 1:4, that doesn't mean that if you buy 4 tickets, 1 of them is guaranteed to win. It means that if you were to buy all of the tickets available in that game, approximately 1 in 4 of them would win a prize.

Winning tickets are distributed randomly in our games, so no one, not even those of us at the lottery or the retailers who sell our tickets, know when or where the next win will hit. That’s an important part of our lottery security procedures.

Think of the random distribution of winning tickets like a deck of cards that’s been shuffled. Within the shuffled deck, there could be three hearts or clubs in a
row and then several cards in a row after that in other suits. It’s the same thing in our games. There could be three winning tickets in a row, and then several nonwinning tickets in a row after that.

It’s our job to ensure that everyone has the same fair shot at winning. The bottom line is, big winners happen all over the state. And, higher ticket sales in a particular area will mean more winners there. It doesn’t mean those tickets are luckier. It just means there were more tickets sold in that area, so there will be more winners there as well, simply based on volume.

We keep a list of all winners of $600 or more in the past year on our website along with the remaining prizes of $50 or more in our scratch and InstaPlay games. We also have a list of unclaimed prizes of $600 or more in our lotto games.

Those lists are part of our efforts to be as transparent as we can about the details in our games. So is this Truth or Myth series.

Whether you play the lottery or not, we want everyone to have an accurate understanding of how the lottery works.

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!

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!

Player Comment: I’m Mad You Pulled Your Holiday-Themed Games

Here’s a player comment we received that in some ways we understand and in other ways, we totally don’t. At all.

The man was mad that we’ve removed our holiday-themed games from store shelves for the year. He said he thought we were being unfair by pulling them.

On one hand, we understand that some people may really like a particular game and want the chance to keep playing it. On the other hand, it wouldn’t make sense for us to have a holiday-themed game still on sale in July. Nothing says summer in Iowa like a … ticket with snowmen and holly on it!

We remove our holiday-themed games from sale each year shortly after the holiday season ends. Once the holidays are over, people are ready to move on!

But we also design our holiday games for the relatively short period of time that they will be on sale. They generally begin sales in early October and then end in early to mid-January after the holidays. By comparison, some of our non-holiday scratch games can be for sale for years at a time.

We order smaller quantities of tickets in our holiday games, designed to best fit their shelf life. And we’ll sometimes bring back a holiday game the following year if it was particularly popular the year before.

So while that particular player wasn’t happy with us, others say they look forward to the switch-over of our games. There probably are as many opinions on the matter as there are people who play.

Just know that we’ll keep doing our best to come up with fun and new game ideas! And before you know it, the NEXT holiday season will be on the way and we’ll have holiday-themed games out once again!

Congratulations to the Million Dollar Holiday winners!

There may be snow and icy temperatures on the horizon, but a big lottery win is sure to warm you up!

It's been great fun getting to meet some of our Million Dollar Holiday winners today, including Heidi Olsen of Allison and Renee Stanbrough of Nashua. Heidi won the $500,000 top prize in Wednesday's drawing, while Renee took home a $100,000 prize in the same promotion.

Heidi found out she was a winner when she checked her email last night. She quickly called for her husband, Gabe, who thought from her alarmed tone of voice that something bad happened.

"It was really crazy, exciting and surreal," she said. "It's probably one of the best feelings ever, I would say."

As the name suggests, the Million Dollar Holiday awarded a total of $1 million in prizes, including a $500,000 top prize, two prizes of $100,000 and a $50,000 prize. You can see the full winners' list here.

The promotion was born after a $1 million prize last year went unclaimed. That unclaimed prize money was then awarded in the lottery's holiday promotion that ended this week.

 

 

 

 

Ticket Packages to Minnesota Timberwolves & Iowa Wolves Games on the Line in Lottery Promotion

Some incredible VIP ticket packages to Minnesota Timberwolves and Iowa Wolves basketball games are on the line in the Bonus Basketball promotion that started today.

The promotion’s entry period opened at 10 a.m. today. Members of the lottery’s free VIP Club can enter nonwinning tickets from the “Bonus Multiplier” scratch game into the promotion for a chance to win the pro basketball ticket packages.

When they enter the promotion, lottery players will choose the games they’d like to win tickets to attend. Nine of the prize packages in the promotion include tickets to both the Golden State Warriors vs. Minnesota Timberwolves game on March 24 in Minneapolis and an Iowa Wolves basketball game in Des Moines.

The promotion’s final prize, called the Last Shot prize package, includes only tickets to the Minnesota Timberwolves home game on March 24 in Minneapolis plus a larger amount of additional spending money.

The first 9 prize packages up for grabs in the promotion are valued at more than $2,800. Each package includes:

• 2 suite tickets to the Minnesota Timberwolves home game on March 24 at the Target Center in Minneapolis with complimentary food, water and soda in the suite;
• a 1-night stay with parking at the Loews Minneapolis Hotel adjacent to the Target Center;
• 2 courtside tickets at center court to an Iowa Wolves home basketball game in Des Moines with complimentary food, water and soda in the Courtside Club; and a parking pass at Wells Fargo Arena;
• $1,000 spending money paid via check;
• co-branded Iowa Lottery and Iowa Wolves shirts.

The final prize package awarded in the promotion is valued at more than $3,100. That Last Shot prize package includes:

• 2 suite tickets to the Minnesota Timberwolves home game on March 24 at the Target Center in Minneapolis with complimentary food, water and soda in the suite;
• a 1-night stay with parking at the Loews Minneapolis Hotel adjacent to the Target Center;
• $1,500 spending money paid via check;
• co-branded Iowa Lottery and Iowa Wolves shirts.

The Bonus Basketball entry period runs through 9:59 a.m. on March 6. The promotion will have three drawing dates on Jan. 25, Feb. 22 and March 7. Entries will not carry over from one drawing to the next, except that all entries not selected as a winner in one of the promotion’s initial drawings will remain eligible for the Last Shot drawing.

As part of the fun, the Iowa Lottery will hold a special event at the Iowa Wolves home basketball game on Feb. 23 in Des Moines. We’ll have more details soon about how VIP Club members can be part of that event!

That Lucky Feeling: A New ‘Family of Games’ is Hitting Stores This Week

The new scratch games hitting stores this week here in Iowa include a special series of tickets that may catch your eye for how much they look alike. And we meant to do that.

Through the years, we’ve occasionally released what we call a “Family of Games.” The latest are the “Luck” games beginning distribution today. Maybe think of them as S-M-L-XL!

The $1 Luck game is red, the $2 Luck game has green tickets, the $5 Luck game is blue, and the $10 Luck game has purple tickets.

Players have told us that they like the fun of a set of games, and we have fun coming up with ideas to try.

The top prize available gets larger as you follow the Luck series up. So does the playing time on the ticket. For example, the $1 Luck game has five prize spots to scratch off and offers a top prize of $1,000, while the $10 Luck game has 25 prize spots to play and offers a top prize of $100,000.

So, choose the version of Luck you like or play them all! And you KNOW I’m going to ask this: Do you feel lucky?

Player Question: How Long Will Your Holiday-Themed Games Be Available?

With the long holiday weekend behind us, our holiday-themed scratch games are on the clock, as the saying goes.

A player reached out to us today to ask how long our holiday games will be available. The short answer is that we’ve got a new round of games scheduled to hit the market on Jan. 3. It may take a few days after that for all the holiday tickets to be replaced in stores by the new games, but just know that the change-out is coming!

So if you want a ticket in one of our holiday-themed games, buy it in the next few days!

You have a little more time than that to enter any nonwinning tickets in the games into our Million Dollar Holiday promotion for a chance to win prizes there. We purposefully time the ending of our holiday promotion to be a few days after the end date for our holiday games. We know that folks may want to enter tickets they just received as a gift or bought as a treat for themselves.

The deadline to enter tickets in the Million Dollar Holiday promotion is before 10 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 8!

Heartwarming Winner Story Alert!

This Iowa woman’s story about winning the lottery absolutely just jumps off the page.

Je Rita Whitman of Anamosa claimed a $30,000 top prize this week in our “$30,000 Crossword” scratch game. She said she bought what ended up being her winning ticket as she was thinking about her mom, who loved Crossword tickets. She says they used to scratch tickets together and laugh about winning one day.

And it turns out they DID!

Je Rita says that her mom, Sonja Warren, won a $30,000 prize on a Crossword ticket in 2015. And as the one-year anniversary of her mom’s passing approached, Je Rita bought a ticket of her own. She says she’s convinced her mom is up there pulling strings for her!

Je Rita says she bought her ticket at a convenience store on her way to work at University of Iowa Hospitals in Iowa City. She said she didn’t scratch her ticket until later and thought initially that she’d won $100. Then she scanned it with the lottery’s mobile app and realized her prize was much larger.

Je Rita says it’s got to be unique to have two lottery winners of $30,000 in the same family.

She and her husband, Bradley, have a plan for the winnings. Je Rita says they’ve been thinking about a cabin so they can go fishing on a lake.

Congratulations, Je Rita. Thank you for lifting everyone’s spirits on a chilly day with your heartwarming story!

Nope, They Don’t Count: Words Within Words, Numbers Within Numbers

Here’s a question we’ve gotten in a couple different ways from players who were hoping for a win. But in neither instance did the ticket involved actually win a prize.

The first question was about one of our “Crossword” scratch games, and whether a word within a word counts toward the total needed on a ticket to win a prize. The short answer is: No.

The image here includes a great example of that. One of the words that you can see on this “$20,000 Crossword” ticket is scapegoat. Following the line of thinking in the question we received, could that word count as two: scapegoat AND goat?

Words within words, meaning partial words, don’t count in a Crossword game. You have to complete the whole word on your ticket. So in this case, you could not count both scapegoat and goat.

Here’s a different twist on that topic, asking about numbers within numbers. If the winning numbers that you need to match on a ticket are 4 and 8 and you have 14 and 18 among your numbers, does that mean you win? In other words, can you win if any of the numbers on your ticket contain a 4 and an 8?

Again, the short answer is no. A number within a number doesn’t count. The number 14 is only that number – it can’t be disassembled to count as a 1, 4, or 14.

No One Claimed The $1 Million Prize, So Now What?

The $1 million Mega Millions® prize won last year in Ames has expired without being claimed, but someone is still going to win that money. 

Click on the video above to learn how the Iowa Lottery will give away the unclaimed prize money in just the next few months!

No, Really: Her Dog Ate Her Lottery Ticket

Here’s an inquiry we’ll classify under ‘believe it or not’ because there’s a perfect name involved.

A woman named Cheryl reached out to us today to share that her dog, Ripley, had ripped up her lottery ticket! She sent us the photo you can see here of the remains of her scratch ticket -- and there are some definite chew marks involved!.

Cheryl said she’d checked her ticket before Ripley got ahold of it, so she knew it had won a prize. She wondered if she could still cash it despite the obvious damage.

In her case, there was enough identifying information on the remaining piece of her “$100,000 Mega Crossword” ticket for her to claim her prize.

There are limits to a situation like that, though!

If your lottery ticket ever ends up getting damaged and you have questions about the prize it may have won, we’ll do our best to help figure it out. Just know that depending on the extent of the damage, it may not be possible to determine the outcome of the ticket.

You’re always welcome to email us at [email protected], contact us on social media, or call us at 515-725-7900 if you have questions about your lottery ticket.

Thank you to Cheryl – and Ripley – for a story that made us laugh today!

Iowa Lottery & Hawkeye Sports Properties Team Up For Hawkeye Scratch Game + Football Promotion

The Iowa Lottery and Hawkeye Sports Properties have teamed up for a new Hawkeye™ scratch game and promotion to give players the chance to win cash prizes or ticket prize packages to 2023 home football games at Kinnick Stadium™.

The exclusive Hawkeye scratch tickets are arriving in stores today, and the Kickoff to Kinnick promotion has opened for entries.

Tickets in the $5 scratch game feature the distinctive Tigerhawk™ logo and images of the Herky Mascot™ in the Hawkeyes’ black-and-gold colors. The scratch game offers players the chance to win instant prizes ranging from $5 up to $50,000.

Iowa Lottery players who don’t win an instant prize on their Hawkeye scratch ticket can enter it into the Kickoff to Kinnick promotion for a chance to win ticket prize packages to the 7 Iowa home football games in 2023.

A total of 41 football ticket prize packages will be given away in the promotion, with either VIP tickets in the private Ironmen Suite and food, water, soda and merchandise available in the suite, or stadium-seat tickets in Kinnick Stadium.

Players will select the ticket prize package and game of their choice at the time they make an entry in the promotion.

To enter the promotion, players must join or already be members of the Iowa Lottery’s free VIP Club. The promotion’s entry period opened this morning and continues through 9:59 a.m. on Oct. 3. There will be three drawing dates in the promotion, with ticket prize packages awarded in the month prior to the home football games involved.

Players can visit the lottery’s website at ialottery.com to enter the promotion or scan an eligible ticket with the Iowa Lottery’s mobile app to enter. As you enter, please pay close attention to the entry deadlines involved. The home games earlier in the season will be closed to promotion entries once the applicable deadline has passed.

Here is a list of the ticket prize packages that will be given away in the Kickoff to Kinnick promotion:

Aug. 16 drawing date
20 ticket prize packages awarded

• 17 VIP prize packages with 2 tickets each in the Ironmen Suite for the Michigan St.-Iowa game on Sept. 30 with food, water, soda and merchandise provided in the suite, and $100 spending money.
• 3 prize packages that each include 4 stadium-seat tickets, $100 spending money and a parking pass to the Utah St.-Iowa game on Sept. 2, the W. Michigan-Iowa game on Sept. 16 or the Michigan St.-Iowa game on Sept. 30.

Sept. 13 drawing date
19 prize packages awarded

• 17 VIP prize packages with 2 tickets each in the Ironmen Suite for the Minnesota-Iowa game on Oct. 21 with food, water, soda and merchandise provided in the suite, and $100 spending money.
• 2 prize packages that each include 4 stadium-seat tickets, $100 spending money and a parking pass to the Purdue-Iowa game on Oct. 7 or the Minnesota-Iowa game on Oct. 21.

Oct 4. drawing date
2 prize packages awarded

• 2 prize packages that each include 4 stadium-seat tickets, $100 spending money and a parking pass to the Rutgers-Iowa game on Nov. 11 or the Illinois-Iowa game on Nov. 18.

Player Question: Can I Ever Win MORE Than The Top Prize?

Here’s a question we just got that I can’t remember seeing before. It came from a player who was very happy that he’d won the top prize in one of our scratch games. But even though he’d uncovered that big prize, he said he kept scratching the rest of his ticket on the off chance there could be more prizes to uncover.

His question was: Can I ever win MORE than the top prize amount? The quick answer is no, but I can see the line of thinking involved.

In some of our scratch games, you can uncover multiple prizes that add up to the total amount you’ll win on a ticket. In other games, you may win just one prize amount on the ticket. That’s the case with the winning ticket you see here in the “Lucky 7 Bonus” game.

We vary the play styles in our games, knowing that different people like different things, and variety is good!

But in any scratch game, the maximum you can win on a ticket is the top-prize amount offered in the game. You can’t win the top prize AND smaller prize amounts that would add up to more than the top-prize figure.

That same detail applies in pull-tab games and InstaPlay games, too. The maximum you can win on each ticket is the top prize amount in the game.