John Martin of Maryland Lottery tells Nestor about the latest Dundalk big winner on Fast Play progressive and hopes for more homers from Orioles in Home Run Riches summer of big hits.
John Martin, Executive Director of the Maryland Lottery, announced a $685,656 Fast Play progressive jackpot winner from Dundalk. The winner, a regular scratch-off player, won $20 and used it to play the Super 777 game. Additionally, a $84,503 Home Run Riches fast play ticket was sold in Whiteford, Maryland. Martin also discussed the NASCAR promotion, where players can enter Powerball tickets for a chance to win up to $1 million. Sports wagering contributions reached $6.3 million in April, totaling nearly $72 million for the fiscal year. These funds support education through the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Maryland Lottery, Dundalk winner, Fast Play, Super 777, Home Run Riches, Whiteford Maryland, unclaimed prize fund, NASCAR promotion, Powerball, Mega Millions, Royal Farms, sports wagering, Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, Orioles, crab cake tour.
SPEAKERS
8
Nestor Aparicio, John Martin
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W N st, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are positively into freak this week here, the birds are home this week. It is spring around here, and you know, I’ve taken a little respite from the Maryland crab cake tour, just for a weekend, just by the pool in Vegas. We’re going to be out at the Encore pool for the Maryland party this week. And then next week, we get back to doing what we do around here, which is Back to the Future scratch offs. We’ll be doing that on the 28th of the month. We’ll be at fadelies. The Saint Louis Cardinals will be in town that day. And then on the seventh of of June, already June, we’re going back up to green mount station in beautiful Hampstead Carroll County, with my man, Chris up Aaron, that delicious crab cake we do in the show at Green mount station. This guy does a show each and every week. Sometimes we move it around and try to play some games. John Martin is the executive director of all things Marilyn, lottery and gaming. He’s got sports wagering news this week, we got triple digit Mega Millions. We’ve got scratch offs. We got all sorts of things happening. But more importantly, when I peruse MD lottery.com as I do every week, and I download the app and do all that good stuff, when I do spokesperson work, get a Dundalk winner this week. So when I see headline at MD lottery.com I’m thinking we should shoot the show early this week, John, we get Dundalk winners. You
John Martin 01:24
know what? One of these days that might be, you I could be
Nestor Aparicio 01:28
I’m not off Dundalk anymore. Mine would say of Towson, you know, because I’m downtown now, so I’ll always be up Dundalk, right? You can
8John Martin 01:35
take the boy to the Dundalk, but you can’t take Dundalk out of the boy. You know that?
Nestor Aparicio 01:39
Well, I tell you want. When I go up to this website and I see MD lottery here, $685,656 that would buy a nice waterfront property down in Dundalk. Imma, tell you right now
John Martin 01:51
that is huge. So let, let’s go there. Because you know that doesn’t happen every day. When someone wins that amount of money. We have super 777, which is a progressive jackpot in our fast play lineup. And so if people aren’t familiar with fast play, they play somewhat similar to a scratch off, and that we have various price points, but they play also like a draw game. And then you get a ticket, a paper ticket, no schmutz, no scratching. So it’s a it’s a what’s it’s not the real word. Of course, it is. I, yes, I need to know the industry word for the little silver schmutz. That’s lakes stuff on there. It has name. Go ahead, fast place. Got ink and paper, period. Ink and paper and and the gentleman who is a, primarily a scratch off person, so he knows, he knows schmutz. He’s seen some schmutz his day. So he tries out this new fast play thing, because all the kids are talking about it. And he goes in there, into his favorite Lottery retailer, and buys one of his traditional scratch offs. Wins about 20 bucks. Decides to take that 20 and move it right over into the super 77777. Game, bam. He is a progressive jackpot winner of $685,656
Nestor Aparicio 03:17
8I saw his picture here at empty lottery, and I thought, you know this has got to be the lead story here this week. And John, the reason this is the lead story. You haven’t been too busy paying Oriole players and paying lottery winners, and they’re not hitting enough home runs right now. In general, specifically, they moved the fence in their own this week. Let’s talk home run riches, because we, we try to lead with that. But I see you’re giving a lot of money away in Dundalk, not enough money away on a nightly basis for this home run thing. But they’re going to start like the weather’s heating up. They’re going to run you to the poor out. There’s going to be grand slams, I swear, sooner than later.
John Martin 03:55
Hey, before we before we run there real quick. Let’s still stay with home run riches, because we kind of forget sometimes that there is a $5 fast play home run riches game, which triggers the chance to win home runs, $500 home runs at the Orioles games. And we had, lo and behold, our first for 2025 season, our first progressive jackpot winner on the home run riches fast play game, we had a lucky player win $84,503 the very first ticket. They have not come forward yet. So if you are holding a fast play ticket for home run riches, and on top it says, Congratulations, you’ve just won $84,503 come on and see me. Come on down. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 04:41
hold on. It says this ticket was sold in Whiteford Maryland. So not everybody knows where Whiteford Maryland is. Why don’t you tell us where it is? I’m looking it up. I don’t know where Whiteford Maryland is. I’m trying to find it right. Is it missing? Wait a minute, hold on. Is it missing? You ought to be able to find this person and. In Whiteford, Maryland. Whiteford, Maryland is above street Maryland. It is above it’s it’s Bel Air north, north, north, north. It’s almost in Pennsylvania by delta PA. So yeah, I was going to say Pennsylvania
John Martin 05:12
is north of street Maryland. So it’s tucked away in between Street and and Pennsylvania. Whiteford is
8Nestor Aparicio 05:18
an unincorporated community in Harford County, Maryland, near pilesville, Maryland. So, um, so sure, there’s got a lot of, well, I got Google Maps, and maybe you don’t at the Maryland lottery, I don’t know. But when I hear of places I don’t know about this, this Whiteford doesn’t even have citizens, and they got a winner up there. So well, hey, let’s come forth and get that ticket. Claim the money. I don’t want you getting that money. So you’re saying it’s possible this person could be from Pennsylvania. Can I ask a quote? This is not on the script that set the enemy here, but there’s a script. There is never a script on Baltimore positive. That’s what makes it so beautiful. It’s it’s dangerous, is what we do here. What happens to unclaimed funds if people don’t come? What what goes on?
John Martin 06:00
Well, people have 182 days to claim to come forward if they do not come forward on day 183 that money goes into what we call an unclaimed prize fund, ironically enough, and that money then is redistributed out for future player promotions. We don’t keep it. We don’t have a big party. Now it goes back to player promotions because there’s, in fact, money that was won by players. Unfortunately, they did not claim it. So when we do things like promotions, our $6 for five racetracks promotion, which is going on currently, our Kino sprinkler promotions, which are available a couple times during the year, cash, pop, promotion, whatever it is that money, but the promotions comes from the unclaimed prize fund. And there you have it.
Nestor Aparicio 06:51
Dare I ask? And it’s, you can do the homework on this. You don’t need to know the answer to this right away. But millions of dollars, or 1000s, or, you know, is it a lot? It happens every year and and I would think of it might be scratch offs that didn’t get sold, or that, you know, just in some way, that there would be a ticket that gets sold and gets laundered, or something awful happens like that, like but all of that much money are we talking about?
John Martin 07:18
8Well, it actually we, we count on it, if you will, to be part the base for our promotion and play through the year. So the reason we do so many promotions is because there’s some coin in the unclaimed price fund. So yeah, it’s, it turns over, you know, it’s, it’s significant money, but money that gets reinvested back into player promotions. Well, that’s a sad tale. That’s just
Nestor Aparicio 07:41
that’s what we want to avoid here. Because if you play, we want you to win. We want you to collect. I want you like, you know, like our friend in Dundalk, $685,000 you know what I want you to do right now. I want you to change the Orioles Mojo. Even though you’re a Cleveland guardians guy at heart, you you want to give away this money, right? I do. You want them to hit more home runs, right and run your ragged, right a little bit, right every time the bases are loaded? We don’t want lob left on base runners, our risks, our ISB. We want grant slain. This
John Martin 08:13
became Sesame Street all of a sudden. We’re doing spelling now
Nestor Aparicio 08:17
I’m trying to be Mr. Rogers. I’m trying to find friends. I’m looking for the helpers. I’m looking for the helpers. They’re gonna, you know, separate you from the money in home run riches. We have paid $47,000
8John Martin 08:29
as you and I speak today, $47,000 one grand salami in that, but 45 home runs. So that’s, that’s your total. The progressive jackpot now has been reset at $40,000 it has climbed up to 42,000 plus as we speak. And you know who’s happy about the the the next set of games, it’s a homestand. They’re the homestand boys in town that may in these games. Yes, Kenneth Klein, senior of Baltimore, Maryland, is our contestant for the opening game of the Twinkies series. Brittany Bosley from Dundalk, I probably know is, is our contestant for for the for the next game, and Jay clog of gaithersburg. So we have the next three contestants lined up, hoping the skies part and we see a little bit of sunshine, or at least not rain. We’ll see what happens this week.
Nestor Aparicio 09:25
Hopefully feast on the twins pitching a little more than they did last week. John Martin is here. He’s the Executive Director of all things Maryland lottery and gaming. We, of course, picked the Maryland crab cake tour back out on the road. Little respite this week, we back out with the Back to the Future scratch offs on the 28th at Faith leagues, hopefully in the oils, hitting home runs before the Cardinals game. And then up at Green mount station, John, lots of things going on. I went out to MD lottery.com, as I want to do here, every week we encourage others to do there’s a NASCAR thing going on. And just in general, the big jackpots now are in triple digits as we speak. And they can always be hit by my wife or others for hundreds of millions of dollars, but Mega Millions, as well as Powerball, and they’ve added a little extra juice, including with our friends at Royal farms and one of the promotions, but the NASCAR promotion that that that comes to me with the speed you’ve been doing NASCAR race, John,
John Martin 10:16
I’ve never been to one. No, I went to
Nestor Aparicio 10:18
8Dover about 25 years ago, I was Bucha wiser sponsored. We had the driver, Ricky Craven, on, so they invited me down to Dover. It is fast and lively. And I mean this, and I’m not a race car fan. Everybody knows that, but it’s something everybody should do once in their life, where the head said he took the loud off, but to see the power and the speed and the beauty and the colors of the cars and the roar of the crowd, I would highly recommend that everyone do it one time.
John Martin 10:48
You know what? It is, a fun thing. And people can do all of that and win potentially a million dollars. It’s even funner. Oh, don’t I skip that part. I didn’t see the million dollar part. Let me tell you about May I tell you, can’t can i May I tell you, life in the cash lane? Okay? Life in the cash lane. We did this promotion last year as well. You may recall, matter of fact, a Marylander made it to the Elite Eight. And what do I mean by that as well? I tell you what. You buy your Powerball ticket now until the end of June, and you can enter that ticket into a second chance contest, a drawing to be eligible to participate in a cash drawing in Phoenix at the end of the NASCAR season. Now we will select beginning in Oh, the end of May. For 247, consecutive weeks, we will draw five lucky winners. They will each win $1,000 and those 35 names are then combined with other lotteries around the country who are doing similar things in the spring. And we will select, or I should say, NASCAR will select 16 winners. There will only be, well, we have 35 candidates. There may only be one or none, but one selected for Maryland. And we had that the currents last year. And then think of an NCAA bracket. Those 16 people are in a bracket, if you will. And beginning then I want to say it’s in the in the end of the summer, there’ll be a series of NASCAR races, where each time we have a race, we go down from 16 to 12 to eight to four, and then those five four finalists are in the finals, if you will, and they are live in Phoenix, and one of those four at the race will win a drawing and pocket $1 million and there are cash prizes along the way, as people drop out. But pretty exciting stuff, even if you’re not a race fan,
Nestor Aparicio 12:45
I know this is through my lottery rewards. I want to make give you a little oxygen. I I don’t say that a whole lot my lottery rewards, I always say, download the app, scan, do all of that. But, um, I guess I’m old enough, and I think you’re old enough too to remember, like, part of like, Second Chance was, like, mail in the form on the back and put a stamp and like, do all of that. The digital part of everything, from getting my Marriott Rewards together to my airline rewards to all of that my lottery rewards is something that’s sort of revolutionized lottery also allowed for a lot of people to win a lot of money.
John Martin 13:19
You know that it’s, if you’re right back in the day, we would get things mailed into us, and then our communications team and our assistant communications director, who was all of about five feet tall, would jump into this bin with cards and literally up to her eyeballs, picking out, you know, winners out of that. So now she’s appreciative. This is a digital environment. Doesn’t have to go into the into the rolling device there and and actually come up with with the winners with the drum. But in addition to the Powerball, which is fun with, with NASCAR, we have a closer to home promotion with Mega Millions you alluded to with our partners at Royal farms, that’s a little bit different in that you between now and the end of June, if you purchase a Mega Millions, a new $5 Mega Millions ticket, if you purchase a $10 flavor, that meaning two draws on that ticket, You can enter that in for prizes, up to $250 royal farms gift cards, up to, I should say, $1,500 and we’ll start those drawings beginning here. Actually, this week will be the first drawing and go to MD lottery.com to get a schedule for the drawings throughout the the rest of the spring and early summer, and ultimately we’ll have four, four people winning $1,000 gift cards, and two lucky winners winning $1,500 gift cards, and everybody else wins $250 gift cards, if you are selected. So a lot of fun for closer to home being here at the Royal farms. Yeah. I
8Nestor Aparicio 15:00
went to Royal farms the other day and had some fried chicken, and it was tasty and delicious. So those gift cards will pay off in other ways, including reward points and all of that stuff. John Martin is here to reward winners and and talk about sports wagering as well. We we talk about gambling responsibly all the time. We’re talking about the race track this week, and we’ve had the racetrack promotions we’ve talked about as well as we have everything this week with the Derby winner, added Pimlico, as we brought up last week, we but journalism is alive, so at least I get to say that, but the sports wager is also alive. John and I know we talk about where this money goes. We I do a lot of talk about Kerwin in the state and education and funds and the general fund, and how gaming in this state funds lots and lots of good civic projects in this state, so many ways. But more than that, sports wagering sort of the newest chill of money that didn’t exist five years ago, certainly didn’t exist 10 years ago that you have a monthly sort of timpani, and it gets to be a big number. Sports wagering is very, very popular here in Maryland,
John Martin 16:04
this last reporting month would have been for the month of April, we recorded our ninth best month in terms of contributions to the state taxes we collect for sports wagering, and that was to the tune of over $6.3 million for the month of April. When you add that to our previous fiscal 25 tally through then the month of April, with two months remaining, we now have nearly $72 million of contributions to the blueprint for Maryland’s Future Fund, which, of course, benefits education here in the state. So that’s something that’s we’re very proud of. Last year, fiscal 24 for the total of the year, we had about 60, a little over $60 million so we surpassed that eight months into this year, and are on our way. Don’t want to jinx us, but you know, we’re looking at $80 million out in the future and see if we can get get there by the time we go through May and June for the final accounting. And that money is earmarked specifically for the blueprint, as I said earlier, but we have beneficiaries for all of the lottery and casino gaming programs that we have and and we, we tend to do that accounting at the end of the year, and I’m sure we’ll do that after we get the final tally in in July or August, maybe at Mako. We’ll have a chance to update you on on on what that means for for fiscal 25
Nestor Aparicio 17:32
See, get me excited talking about Mako, because that’s Ocean City. That’s the beach. It’s summertime. Now, I just made my reservations to stay down there off the coastal highway. So we will convene, as we do each and every week. John Martin is the executive director of all things Maryland lottery gaming. Always telling folks play responsibly, have a good time with it. I like holding the tickets up. I like giving them out. We’ll be doing that on the 28th again, at fadelese, as part of the Maryland crab cake tour. And we are ramping the crab cake tour up into June and July and another anniversary, 27 years here at W, N, S T, in August, we’re going to feature our 27 favorite things to eat, all brought to you by the Maryland lottery and our crab cake tour. John, rest up this week. I hope the Orioles run your ragged. I hope they wear out twins pitching. I hope they have an attitude of high nettitudinal degree in winning this this thing with DC this weekend, and I hope that they hit 20 home runs this week. How about
John Martin 18:26
8that? That would be a lot of fun. Wouldn’t
Nestor Aparicio 18:30
it more fun than being 10 games under 500 last place? I’ll tell you that right now John John Martin is executive director of all things Maryland, lottery gaming. He’ll join us next week. It’s freak this week. I am in Las Vegas this week for the Maryland party. We chatted with Howard Perlow about that last week as well. Lots and lots of things going on loops at the ballpark all weekend. If there’s any breaking news, you’ll get it first on the wnst tech service. All of that brought to you by Cole roofing and Gordian energy. I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 and we never stop talking Baltimore. Positive. You.
