ialottery blog

190 INDYCAR Race Weekend Prize Packages In Newton On the Line In Powerball Promotion

The INDYCAR Series is staging back-to-back races this summer in Newton, and Iowa Lottery players can have the chance at tickets to the race weekend in a Powerball® promotion that started this morning.

VIP Club members can enter eligible Powerball tickets in the promotion with 190 prize packages to the INDYCAR Race Weekend on the line. Up for grabs are 20 VIP Suite Experiences and 75 single-day prize packages for the Hy-VeeDeals.com 250 at the Iowa Speedway on July 23, and 20 VIP Suite Experiences and 75 single-day prize packages for the Hy-Vee Salute to Farmers 300 on July 24.

Each VIP Suite Experience includes two suite tickets (for either the Saturday or Sunday race), food, non-alcoholic beverages, $100 spending cash, lottery swag, and concert tickets. Each single-day prize package includes two grandstand race tickets (for either Saturday or Sunday), concert tickets, food vouchers, $100 spending cash and lottery swag.

All promotion winners get to attend the day’s pre- and post-race concerts. Tim McGraw will put on a pre-race concert on Saturday while Florida Georgia Line will put on the post-race concert the same day. Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton will be in concert on Sunday.

If you’re a VIP Club member, you can enter winning and nonwinning Iowa Powerball tickets today through the morning on May 3. Each Powerball ticket entered equals one entry in the prize category you choose, regardless of the price of the ticket or the number of plays it.

The entry period runs through 9:59 a.m. on May 3, with the drawing to follow on May 5.

Player Mail: Walk Me Through Buying The ‘Play ‘Em All’ Option

An eastern Iowa man’s email is behind this blog entry, and I’ll do my best to walk you through how to find the ‘Play ‘Em All’ feature on the lottery terminal, in case you ever run into trouble when you try to buy it.

 

The man emailed to let us know that he was having trouble buying the ‘Play ‘Em All’ option, which is available in the Powerball, Mega Millions and Lotto America games. The man said that employees in some of the stores in his area didn’t seem to know about the option or how a customer could buy it.

 

In case you’re ever in that same situation, I want you to have the inside scoop about how to find the screen for that option on the lottery terminal. We’ll keep working with our retailers to provide the latest details we can about the lottery, but sometimes the best plan is to have the information yourself.

 

If you’re not familiar with the Play ‘Em All option, it allows you to buy plays for all of the numbers for the Powerball, Mega Ball and Star Ball in the three different games involved. For example, if you buy the Play ‘Em All option in Mega Millions, you’ll get 25 plays with all of the Mega Ball numbers available (1-25). In Powerball, the Play ‘Em All option will give you 26 plays to cover all of the numbers in the Powerball pool; and in Lotto America, you’ll get 10 plays, one for each of the 10 Star Ball numbers available.

 

Here in Iowa, the clerk can find the Play 'Em All feature on the lottery terminal by touching the "Special Offers" tab in the top right-hand corner of the terminal's main screen. That tab brings up the Play ‘Em All screen, and you can then choose the game you want to buy.

 

Or, if you’re buying a ticket at a self-service kiosk here in Iowa, after you select a play option in Powerball, Mega Millions or Lotto America, in the upper right of the screen, you'll see a button that says: Play 'Em All. By touching that button, you can play that option.

 

I hope these “insider” tips can help you walk through the process – and make it easy!

SW Iowa Man Wins $250,000 Powerball® Prize

(Click image to play winner video.)

 

Now THIS is how to start the week off right! This morning, we got to meet Lon and Terri Grail of Afton and celebrate with them as Lon claimed the $250,000 prize he won in Saturday night’s Powerball drawing.

 

Lon’s easy-pick ticket initially won a $50,000 prize by matching four of the first five numbers and the Powerball. But he’d also added the Power Play option to his ticket, and Saturday’s Power Play number was five, so Lon’s winnings multiplied to $250,000!

 

Congrats to the Grails! As for their “mad money” plans? A new riding lawn mower is in their future …

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.

We’re Now On Instagram & Pinterest!

We know you like to connect with us in the places you already go, so now there are two new ways you can do that: The Iowa Lottery has joined Instagram and Pinterest.

We’ve been involved in social media for eight years, proving that time really does fly! We jumped in when we started producing our own videos back in 2007 – and that counts as a couple millennia ago in the fast-changing world of social media!

But through it all, we’ve continued to gain new likes, followers and contacts, so we think (we hope) that means you like what we’re doing.

So now, in addition to our blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube pages, you can find us on Instagram and Pinterest. We’re iowalottery (lowercase) on Instagram and IowaLottery (uppercase) on Pinterest.

Look for some changes coming in our monthly social media contests that we think will allow even more people to get in on the fun by entering them.

Two more ways we can say: See you there!