As the Mega Millions number soars, John Martin of the Maryland Lottery gets local with on the ways folks here are cashing million dollar checks even before the jackpot gets hit again.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
winner, win, people, lottery, maryland, homerun, john, 25th anniversary, mega millions, talk, baltimore, crab cake, state, year, finalists, friday, nestor, orioles, prize, week
SPEAKERS
John Martin, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
What about W en s t Towson, Baltimore and Baltimore positive it is a great great week read your first things first Happy birthday to my mother. She would have been 104. today and this week as the Orioles come home and the Orioles are in first place, but I’ll tell you what we got to 25th anniversary. Cooking up next week. I’ve been putting this together for 25 years. It’s our 25th anniversary will be Costas hence the shirt and Dundalk, Maryland. We’ll be there on Thursday, August 3, which is our 25th anniversary then we’re going to sort of extend the party to drug city on Friday. So nice. We had to do it twice. Thursday and Friday. Come on out. I have all get nasty shirts free the birds hats, seat cushions, nasty newsletters, posters, placards, defense stuff, hats stuff to give away. And most importantly, the remaining batch of the instant lottery scratch offs in the Maryland lottery we’ll be giving those way our friends at window nation will also be on and 866 90 nation to kick off our 25th anniversary. And I tell you what, John Martin is kicking things off if if this pot doesn’t get hit, and Mega Millions This thing’s gonna be it’s gonna be in that Austin Powers of $1 billion dollar range. He joins us now he’s the executive director of all things lottery. You know, I wanted to talk like Oreos with you, I want to feed on our mutual hatred of the Yankees and be this week. It’s good. The Orioles are good. You got all the stuff, you’ve given us money away and then you get breaking news. So I have to clear the way for you and take my little list and move it to the back because apparently we got more millionaires in the state of Maryland.
John Martin 01:33
Breaking news Nesta, breaking you know, back in college I wanted to be a broadcast news journalist. I envisioned myself pushing Tom Brokaw out of that nasty chair and saying I got a Tom
Nestor Aparicio 01:43
and I’m making no les Nessman jokes right now. I’m not making it.
John Martin 01:47
Who knew it take take today for me to do this to live my dream. Thank you for the opportunity. Turkeys
Nestor Aparicio 01:52
might fly. Hey, money has been nests all my life. You think I haven’t gotten less nasty jokes. Come on.
John Martin 02:00
Nice. Yeah. I hope you and I are the only two that are getting this. I mean, that’s a classic. That is a classic. But enough about him. We got millionaires. Go ahead. What do you got? Where are they? You know, last night was the $820 million Mega Millions drawing which no one? No one one.
Nestor Aparicio 02:18
My wife pointed out that she didn’t win.
John Martin 02:20
Yes, yes. And I can confirm she did not win. That’s not the breaking news Park. Friday window. Somebody did not know somebody won a million dollars right here, Carolyn, matter of fact, at Pine liquors in Prince George’s County. That’s all I can tell you now until that person chooses to come forth. They have 182 days to claim their $1 million prize. Come see me. I’ll be more than happy to give you that oversize blank check and we’ll fill it in together. $1 million Mega Millions winner last night in the state of Maryland, but that’s
Nestor Aparicio 02:53
on the spot, then you take that this year. There’s no annuity involved or anything like that,
John Martin 02:57
right? You have 180 282 days whether you take it tomorrow or six months from now, but it is a million dollar prize. We also had a $40,000 prize last night at the giant in Baltimore County on Loch Raven Boulevard. So
Nestor Aparicio 03:14
if you tend to buy your tickets there, I might know that person that’s really close to the radio station. I mean, that’s. That’s right by Calvert Hall. I know exactly where that is. Wouldn’t that be something? Oh, I’ve been in that parking lot many times. Yes, absolutely. Well, have
John Martin 03:28
you ever purchased a lottery ticket there?
Nestor Aparicio 03:30
No. I’ve just purchased Jamaican food there. I know. We get our lottery tickets I told you we get my wife gets him at Royal farms. She’s royal loyal in that way. She goes to the same grid for her boss. She does it the same way all the time.
John Martin 03:44
But for her but the lucky thing about this winter is they made the in credibly smart purchase of getting that Megaplier for additional buck. And that Megaplier last night was for so $10,000 prize times for $40,000 winner you can buy a lot of Jamaica up Jamaican me crazy with that when you get when you
Nestor Aparicio 04:04
get some Aki and salt fish with that I could get some rounds through chicken, you know, the whole thing. So I think still, for me, the headline is the fact that nobody’s hit the megamillions. Right. Like, we hit Powerball since last time we talked, I think you and I pushed it over the edge and California wins. My wife wakes up and I’m thinking well, we got more people. You know what I mean? Like there’s more odds a California winner. Right, John? The odds are
John Martin 04:29
the same Nestor whether you’re in Maryland, California or on the moon. Well, maybe not the moon part but more people
Nestor Aparicio 04:35
play in California and in play. There’s more people there. The odds
John Martin 04:39
are one in 302 million for megamillions one and 292 million for Powerball. Yeah, maybe they may get a few more tickets there. But it is interesting because the top three Powerball winners in history, all in the state of California.
Nestor Aparicio 04:56
Well, you can win if you’re in loan accounting. I know I I’ve seen this right
John Martin 05:00
it can happen, it can happen. And this Friday $910 million Mega Millions, estimated as of this time before, you know, check MD lottery.com. Check your Maryland lottery app over the noon hour on Friday and see if that gets bumped up. And if we hold pat on that the cash option $464.2 million estimate at this time, so we’ll have some fun, please play responsibly. And boy, if that if that turns over on Friday, next week, we’ll be talking about another billion dollar jackpot. It seems like we were just talking about one we were just chatting
Nestor Aparicio 05:37
the other day and it seemed like it was just a minute ago that Barbara was winning homerun riches and the Orioles were that was so second place, right? I mean, that was so nice. Day you don’t I mean, it wasn’t even Oh, and hey, you were the guy talking maybe Fourth of July, this thing would get hit maybe. And they hit it a month before any middle of May estimated. Right? The middle of May. And then since then all they do is win win win no matter what, what what. And the Yankees are coming in. And more than that, you still have that in play. But then you were talking all this stuff about like the State Fair and the State Fair. And I’m thinking like, John, that’s, that’s at the end the summer, we’re not gonna talk about that. Let’s talk about the beginning of summer. Let’s talk about the Fourth of July. Let’s talk about all these other things. Now all of a sudden, it’s like, alright, state fairs right around the corner here, we got deadlines. And I want you to scream about that. Because you’re given unprecedented money away as part of this, this 50th anniversary thing that I’ve stolen a lot of ideas from our 25th anniversary farm.
John Martin 06:43
Please do ideas are for the taking. We hope you can you can profit and benefit from them. But but some lucky winner is going to potentially benefit by a giveaway $5 million top prize at the State Fair now what details I can share with you now we have eight of 10 finalists already selected. Over the last several months, we’ve been picking two finalists every month for the last four months who have entered their $50 worth of lottery play equals one entry. So if you bought one $50 scratch off ticket, that’s already one entry, you bought 50 Pick three tickets of the dollar each over the last several months. That’s another entry. And so eight of 10 Entering finalists have already been named. On the August 2, we will select the final to rounding out our field of 10. Those 10 folks will be invited to the state fair on Friday, September 8. And we will select in a series of live events. First of all 10 folks will come up there and we’ll cut that group in five or in half to five semi finalists. And those five semi finalists will go through another iteration another game to play to select one finalist and that one finalists will have the chance to play for a cash prize between $100,000 They’re guaranteed nothing less than $100,000 up to potentially $5 million. That all happens live at the Maryland State Fair in September.
Nestor Aparicio 08:11
John, I get the press release in front of me here and I do appreciate Seth doing that how the pirates doing I don’t know we’re in first place. I want to read the names here. Andrea Grimes from Huntingtown that’s in Calvert County, and need a Karki from montgomery village that’s in montgomery county. And I’m doing this on purpose. Bonita Klein from Forest Hill that’s listening range here. We got a lot of listeners and Forest Hill up in Harford County. Jacqueline Kaluga from Arnold Dan and Anna Rundle county will be doing the Maryland crab cake tour at the end of August with an aroma county executive Steuart Pittman down at Pappas and Glen Burnie that’s not it’s close to Arnold but not really Arnold and that’s not really Baltimore, Virginia mayo, Holland from Berlin. I was in Berlin the other day driving through the city, Worcester County over in the Eastern Shore, Belinda Parsons from Salisbury. I spent the night in Saulsbury. Sunday night after crossing the state line up to Delaware. Why comico County, Connie Plater from Oxon Hill that’s in Prince George’s County never say PG message. Mary Sheldon from Eastern I drove through Eastern I got a giant yellow watermelon just north of Eastern and Talbot County. There’s a problem John, there’s eight people. No Baltimore, no Baltimore County. What’s going on here? I mean, we gotta get we gotta get some Baltimore winters these last two, right, but surprisingly,
John Martin 09:29
you had a connection to all of them. Are you the Kevin Bacon of the Maryland lottery,
Nestor Aparicio 09:36
stadion crab cakes, I pulled up, I went to her lock, and I’m gonna say this one more time, even though the crab cake was just okay, this weekend. There’s a place called Suicide bridge in her lock. It’s off the beaten path cage. People always ask me, where should I go to get a crab cake that I don’t know about? That’s not Costas, or Coco’s or Pappus or places that are inside the beltway that people go. I tell them so I go off the beaten path. So if you had a winner in her life, luck. If you had a winner and Secretary Marilyn, I’ve been through all these towns Denton, I’ve been through all these towns the last couple days, you see some things. Let me Can I just say this as you being the big sponsor of what we do with this Crazy Crab cake tour, I brought this idea to you I ran into a couple years ago, and we we put this thing together, this state is so freaking beautiful. Like, I can’t begin to tell you that you need to get off a 50 I didn’t do until I was 45 years old. Because I was always in a hurry to get to the beach. You know, there were girls, there was beach, there was sand, there was music, there were girl, there were things at the beach, right? I never got off a 50 now like, it’s all I can do to it and 50 is fine, you go fast. And they built it nicer since I was a kid. This state is beautiful. So when I read these places in why comico when I talk about Pocomoke City, when I talk about Saulsbury These are places like I like going I enjoy I was very upset that the ugly pie was an open Monday to serve pie. So it’s my favorite pie place in the whole state. So go to ugly pie. See, I learn about these things when you sit and talk to the marrow Saulsbury when you move around and have crabcakes in every county, like I did you make friends John, you know, it’s all well,
John Martin 11:17
and we make friends every day at the Maryland lottery no two empty lottery.com to listen to and see and read some of our friends stories are winners. But you know, that’s the beauty of our job here as well. You know, we’ll get winners from every corner of the state. And as well documented, I’m a transplant I’m not a native Marylander so sometimes the city will pop up, and I’ll scratch my head and say I’ve never heard of that. Where is that? And then I go to my Rand McNally and and you know, check it out and say Oh, well that’s interesting. So yeah, Ilona coning, right when the big one I did not,
Nestor Aparicio 11:49
I did not okay, I
John Martin 11:51
missed that trip. But yeah, that was that was something.
Nestor Aparicio 11:54
Well, I mean, this state, I’ve been alone accounting several times, and it’s not an easy place to access replays, people would go, but lefty Grove, there’s a park there. There’s a whole baseball history. There’s just so much history in our state and I love it when I get off the side of the road. And I don’t do a lot of radio and I get to have you on I like talking about that. The homerun riches. Let’s talk about that for one more minute. Because it’s front and center that the Orioles have. I mean, the ravens are starting this week, John and it’s it’s really something and I know you feel it in your building, you have this association with the Orioles every night, you’re gonna hit four home runs one night, you’re given a lot of money away. This has been a fun fun summer, I think all the way around for people of Baltimore, love sports, and who love to play at home and riches is right in the middle of this
John Martin 12:39
homerun riches has been our kind of signature event for the last several seasons. And you know, it’s tough to promote it when when you’re looking at, you know, 5055 wins and over 100 losses. Clearly, this year has been a great convergence, if you will of the team, our 50th anniversary, people engaged, you know, huge crowds in the ballpark. You know, people just talking about it every every day of the week. And as we’ve talked about before, we had our first $50,000 Winner, Barbara, when when the Orioles hit their 50th Home run back in the middle of May. Right.
Nestor Aparicio 13:20
She bought something good. You did. I mean, I hope she did something for herself.
John Martin 13:24
You know what I’m sure she did. She seems like a smart woman who would do that and enjoy and route her team on board and Adley rutschman. Jersey, but I hope she did she a she could have maybe it would have been Ryan mountcastle Wouldn’t better since he’s the guy,
Nestor Aparicio 13:38
Gunner Henderson. Now you know what I mean? Every every night, there’s a different star John, that’s the magic of foreal. Baseball.
John Martin 13:45
You know it is and it’s great. It’s great stories. And the further magic on homerun riches is that we will have a second $50,000 prize winner unheard of our top prize typically is based on how many homeruns they hit, but they get $500 for every home run the players suggested as a contestant of the game, or is selected as contestant of the game. But you know, at the end of the season when we select all the remaining games, and we’ll make those selections, right about the the end of August. So we’ll pick through September and the remaining regularly scheduled games. But after we’ve picked the 100 and 62nd game, we’ll pick one more the 163rd contestant and that person he or she doesn’t have to wait for a game, they’ll automatically have won that second $50,000 prize from the homerun riches.
Nestor Aparicio 14:35
Yeah, I was gonna say to you if they make the playoffs, could you extend the thing and I’m thinking they make the playoffs? And this is God’s honest truth. John, my wife and I were going through the summer schedule and looking at it and that first week October I had to sort of make plans you know, saying like that there could be plus and I think we’re all winners if they make the playoffs, right? I mean at this point, right?
John Martin 14:56
It would be a fun time around here, wouldn’t it? You know
Nestor Aparicio 14:59
you didn’t get my little reference. I just dropped that every night there’s a different star. That’s the magic. If you want me to sing to you something magic happens. See, I grew up with like to say, No, the the Indians have a song or know that they they didn’t have. There was no Indian magic song or no guardians magic. Nothing
John Martin 15:16
was called. I don’t know what Guardians is called Indian fever.
Nestor Aparicio 15:20
Okay. All right. All right. Was that written by Michael Stanley or something like that? Or you know
John Martin 15:24
what, I don’t know. But the next the next time you talk to Terry Pluto, or one of one of the Cleveland historian buckshaw Find somebody asked him about Indian fever, be a believer in the Cleveland Indians. And I’m not going to sing. It’s interesting.
Nestor Aparicio 15:38
You would say that because Bruce Springsteen’s coming here a couple of weeks and those law friends, a great buddy of mine, he’s from Silver Spring, he wrote a song and you can Google this and it’s really famous when the bullets won their champion were 7677 78 He wrote a song called bullets fever, that to this day, and they’re not even called the bullets anymore. Like, and your team’s not called what they’re called back. But but they’re my football team isn’t called what it used to be called the Washington football team is gonna have its fourth name soon. So what’s in a name anyway, but you do the Oriole magic song, man, when I always think every night there’s a different star. That’s the magic of Oracle baseball. And when I think of the summer 79 And I think of the summer of 2023. Every day, there’s a different star. It’s like every day there’s a different winner, John Martin has given money away. By the way, John, I want to crow a little bit because I gotta get some fresh cheese for my 25th anniversary. Next, we have $100 winner at cocoas Brittany, I got her name. Finally Brittany with two T’s any Why was $100 Winner Coco’s two weeks ago. So and I’m telling you when people win, there was nothing like seeing how excited they get. So it’s a it’s a wonderful gift you’ve given to me that that obviously in the promotion that we do that people really do win and I can’t imagine this million dollar winner is out here somewhere in Prince George’s County and you’re waiting to find this person.
John Martin 16:59
Well, if you remember last week, we had breaking news then as well because it was last week to the day when we announced that we had to millionaire from the mega drawing last week. One was a million dollar winner, and one was a $4 million winner. We sell not heard from the $4 million winner but the million dollar winner from last week was a Windsor mill gentleman who did come in and claim
Nestor Aparicio 17:22
that’s Baltimore Windsor Mills Baltimore. See, okay, good. Good. Good. See,
John Martin 17:26
go to MD lottery.com. You’ll you’ll hear his read his story. He purchased his ticket at national pike a BP
Nestor Aparicio 17:33
you told me about this when you said yes.
John Martin 17:37
Keynes, right. So he came in retiree going to enjoy his winnings of a former bus driver. So I think he’s gonna put it in park and enjoy the enjoy his million dollar win. So yeah, people do win and they win from all corners of the state and MD lottery.com will share with you whether they’re winning prizes on Mega Millions Powerball fast play progressive jackpots, and fast play scratch off tickets. depending on whatever game you’re you choose to play. Regardless of what it is, please play responsibly and enjoy it.
Nestor Aparicio 18:12
You’re gonna make me make a honeymooners reference, aren’t you? Go ahead, Bus Driver. Go ahead. Now I’m not going to do it in a way we got. John Martin is here. He’s the Executive Director of all things, Maryland lottery and gaming and sense of humor here at times. I here’s one thing we don’t have a sense of humor about next. Obviously, every night we’re getting the sports wagering thing, the baseball thing. Footballs getting up on us, right. I mean, Luke’s out training camp this week, sweating it out, you can follow him at Baltimore, Luke, for all the things we’re doing around here, covering football. The ads are coming back again and playing and I know we want to say responsibly, but I want to ask you as the executive director of this and where we are, and we’ve swapped and we’ve talked about opening grand opening and mobile This is the first full year we’re going to have mobile for football. Is there anything we’ve learned you’ve learned and operating this that’s going to be helpful for this year from just the statewide just other than there’s more ways to play and it’s there’s more access to it now. Right? I mean, that type of thing. This time last year was no access in this way. Now there’s full access in every way every day.
John Martin 19:18
I would hope there’s learning going on and and just to continue to ride that bandwagon. We Maryland lottery will be at the m&t Bank Stadium this Saturday. I believe it is Friday. The 29th The 29th for the Ravens practice Saturday, by the way, yes, yes it is. So gates open I understand at 11:45am So for people going down there to to watch the team go through the paces hopefully. Hydrate sunscreen, wear some wear a hat floppy hat would be nice. But also stop by and visit us and concourse this spin the price we’ll maybe make a purchase of a lottery game but enjoy that we will be there. But you’re right Nestor this football season when it kicks off We’ll have ads. As of now I’m trying to do the quick math, we’ll have at least 10 retail sports books, and at least 11 Mobile sports books. Now we may have two or three more. Before the first game of the season, we still have people in the pipeline, we’re still vetting, still qualifying, still putting people out there into the marketplace. So we could have we’re 21. Now we could have 25 between 25 and 30. During this this upcoming season, that’s that’s a lot. And I think I think the market is pretty well saturated, pretty well set at this point. You may recall when we started this process several months ago, we had the potential for 60 licenses. We ended up getting 41 applications in and we’re working through that but yet we still have people that aren’t through that application process. And at this point, I think you know, a lot of a lot of fans have have made their determination on who their their their go to sportsbook is and many of them probably have more than one that they work with, whether it’s one retail and one mobile or multiple mobiles. But in any regard, there, there are a lot of options out there. I think we’ll see some of the promotional offers come back up once once the football season starts. So you know, be prepared for maybe a little uptick on advertising and promotion from from the sportsbook operators. But we’ve seen a nice leveling off, we’ve seen the revenue forecast numbers be pretty good, pretty consistent with what we we promise to pay to the state and after the first full year. Or I should say the most recent fiscal year and having a full full year under our belt now, we’ll probably be again closer to 30 million mark. This time next year when we talk about what fiscal 2014
Nestor Aparicio 21:51
Well, it’s really a first measurement, right, it’s the first measurement from the beginning of a real football season for I mean, we know where that that’s where the play has been. I know baseball is trying to change that on a daily basis as as was tennis a couple of weeks ago, and f1 and all these other sports that have sort of come on. But football still, you know, in front of all of us and the seasons beginning I want to remind everybody to play responsibly, you can visit MD gambling help.org Or one 800 gambler. We talk about this all the time. It’s confidential. If you’re having problems, especially with it being new, please, I have a lot of wide net, my audience of folks who loves sports in lots of ways. Please be responsible. John, anything else I’m missing here? I mean, I feel like, again, the headline is, we got nine under $10 million. And believe me, that’s deadline for my wife. In Mega Millions through this week. We got some local winners as well. But just a lot of games, a lot of scratch offs, a lot of things happen. And it’s it’s hot out there, John, it is
John Martin 22:48
in a number of ways. You know, we have hot games, hot temperatures, and in fact, we have a cache heatwave. I’m going to screw this up a heat wave promotion, where based on the physical temperature will determine the winner your potential winning amount. Matter of fact, let me call that one up here. I’m sorry, we’re probably running up against your time. Well, no,
Nestor Aparicio 23:10
no, no. So we get to 98 or 99 on the weekend. All right, what happens now? I’m looking at the forecast 9795 96 Then it goes down into the 80s. And who just wants to win something 80s I want to win up the 90s. So
John Martin 23:24
this is a second chance contest. Players can go to MD lottery.com. For more details. It’s called our cash heatwave. The hotter it gets, the more cash you could win. And that means when your your number is selected, and we have a an entry deadline coming up the very first one on July 30. So plenty of times to get in. You haven’t missed anything yet. But when we start to select on August 1, our first batch of winners, we will refer back to the last calendar week. And depending on the high watermark of the temperature for that week will determine the price amount if we have a degree day over 100 degrees. The cash price is $10,000.
Nestor Aparicio 24:04
They don’t do this in Arizona. I bet they don’t do it. John, Arizona does not want to get that kind of money away.
John Martin 24:10
No, no, no, they’d be they’d be kind of locked in on that. But if the high temperature is 90 to 99, the cash price is $7,500.80 to 89 $5,000 below 80. And I don’t think we’ve seen below 80 for a while. The cash price is $2,500. So the hotter it gets, the more money you can win. Go to MB lottery.com. And learn more about our heatwave promotion which begins at the end of the month.
Nestor Aparicio 24:36 Yeah, I don’t want to give 2500 bucks away but I like 80s better than 90s For me, you know just from a temperature standpoint, but but I you know my people from the equator John, we like it hot it’s summertime. I’m not gonna complain because like, You’re from Ohio. You know what a foot of snow is like, right? So I mean, yeah, it’s right around the corner. You want snow fly to the southern hemisphere. It’s somewhere around here. It’s hot. The Orioles are in first place the ravens are back on the field. Jon’s giving money away. There’s almost a billion dollars in the pot and Mega Millions. And we are celebrating our 25th anniversary cost this next Thursday, we’ll be there from 11 to four, we got great guests. And then on Friday, we’re going to be drug city because I couldn’t fit all the guests that wanted to fit and I wanted to go to Dundalk and, and they got milkshakes at York City. So I gotta get there for that. That’s on Friday 11 to four all the present depart friends at the Maryland lottery, Ross has threatened to give me some new scratch off so I’m gonna get a different game. I think although this has been a very lucky game, our friends to win their nation 866 90 nation also put it on and our 25th anniversary begins on Thursday, you’re going to see stuff and on social media. It’s going to be an amazing 25 weeks beginning. In the beginning of August, we’re going to celebrate the 25 greatest moments in the history of wn St. I’m excited about that. John, I shall see you next week. And if this thing keeps going, it’ll be an Austin Powers celebration next week of over a billion dollars. All right. Looking forward to it Nestor Thank you. You got to John Martin, Executive Director of all things Maryland lottery and gaming at some point I’m gonna get him to loan accounting because I’m tired of talking about lefty grove. All y’all should go out and see this beautiful state. You should eat peach cake this time of year, you should get out and eat fresh Maryland tomatoes. You should go eat a crab cake someplace you’ve never been. You should drive on a road off of 50 or off of 70 that you’ve never been on. Go fly fish no do something different this summer. It’s beautiful out on Nestor. We are WNS da and 1570, Towson Baltimore, getting old and we never stop talking Baltimore Positive.
