(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Lottery ended the first quarter of the fiscal year with sales running ahead of last year, thanks to a big jackpot. Iowa Lottery C-E-O Matt Strawn. “Through September, through that three month period, total lottery sales just slightly ahead of 118 million dollars represents a 15-point-oh-three increase over last year through September,” he says. Strawn says the money sent to the state was also up. “Total lottery proceeds through September total 24-point-nine million. And that represents a year over year proceeds increase of 38point-six-five percent, and we’re ahead of fiscal ’26 budget targets by about 40 percent,” he says. The bottom line was boosted by the first big jackpot in some time.

“Those results were very heavily influenced by that one-point-seven-eight-seven billion-dollar Powerball jackpot we had in early September,” Strawn says. “In fact, the week of that big jackpot was the fifth highest sales week in the 40 year history of the Iowa Lottery.” Strawn says other games also benefited from the jackpot excitement. “When you have a large Powerball jackpot, there’s a bit of a halo effect on the rest of the lottery products that see a slight increase,” he says, “certainly nothing like we saw with the Powerball sales. But that increase dissipates over time.” Strawn says October has been a normal month thus far. “Sales have normalized and are much more closely tracking where we were last year, at least through the month of October,” Strawn says.

Strawn says fuel prices and the economy have more impact on sales in the absence of a big jackpot run.