Seth Elkin of Maryland Lottery joins Nestor for some Ravens chatter and late chances to win big prizes, and highlighted a $2.9 million Fast Play VIP Club ticket win in Randallstown, the largest jackpot in five years.
Nestor Aparicio and Seth Elkin from the Maryland Lottery discussed the Maryland Crab Cake Tour, upcoming events, and lottery news. They highlighted a $2.9 million Fast Play VIP Club ticket win in Randallstown, the largest jackpot in five years. Elkin mentioned the Raven Scratch Offs, including a $10,000 cash prize for finalists in December’s drawings and a trip to New York for three winners to see the Ravens play the Giants. They also discussed Mega Millions, with a current jackpot over $450 million, and a promotion offering up to $1,500 in Giant gift cards for buying $10 worth of Mega Millions tickets.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Maryland lottery, crab cake tour, Ravens scratch offs, holiday events, fast play games, $2.9 million winner, progressive jackpot, Mega Millions, free groceries, Thanksgiving traditions, apple pie, cinnamon ice cream, responsible gambling, community events, second chance promotion
SPEAKERS
Seth Elkin, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W N, S T am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, Baltimore, positive. You know, the transcription picked it up as Dallas the other day, Dallas, really Towson. I have to say that if I said chosen, maybe like, you know, Ellen Bennis, or whatever her name was from, from Seinfeld, and that Oriole, Yankee skip. Maybe it all worked out our friends at the Maryland lottery putting us on the road. Don’t ask me why, because they like crab cakes, because they have Raven scratch offs that they must give out. And all of this money and winnings in 2.9 millions and all this stuff that we’re going to talk about, we’re pre mount station doing it this week, the Maryland crab cake tour. And then we’re like, doing it into December. We’re just holidayed all up. The eggnog will be flowing at Cocos on December the fourth. We’re going to be at Gertrude on the fifth. We are going to be, for the first time ever, doing the crab cake tour at a place where they ain’t got a crab cake, but it’s a me cheese on December 17. So if you could then have lunch, we’re going to pretend the pine rotundo has crab in it. Um, Jody is sworn she’s going to put some crab on the menu that day. Just for fun, we’re going to invite Nancy Longo over. It’ll be a good time. It’s also brought to you by friends at Jiffy Lube multi care. So the crab cake tour is out on the road if you have been listening in this week at AM, 1570 through the holiday and Thanksgiving, which we call thanks winning here with the Maryland lottery. Um, you’ve heard a lot of music, classic, little known fact before, I had to stick to sports and got stuck in politics and business and entrepreneurial. I was a crazy music critic like Cameron Crowe at the Baltimore Sun back in the 1980s if you hear random interviews with Lou Graham from foreigner, or John Denver or Ingle bird Humperdinck, or, you know, it could be literally anybody around here. It’s the music Classic series. It’s all brought to you by our friends at curio wellness and foreign daughter. It’s all out at Baltimore positive. This guy has been waiting since the last time Pittsburgh beat Baltimore. It’s something to join me. It is really, really, as the church lady would say in Saturday live convenient that Seth Elkin, from the mayor of the lottery, has joined us. He ends come down from the mountain after an unlikely victory at the confluence. Seth, how are you? I mean, my You’re a man who needs no introduction with a penguins floor mat in your office over at the montgomery awards building over there, by the way, I got the east side view. I don’t have your building in my screenshot.
Seth Elkin 02:27
I don’t know how unlikely it is, though the Ravens don’t seem to be able to beat the Steelers. So you might need to rephrase that a little bit. Forgive me for having that opportunity to rub it in while I can, because it may not last. So before
Nestor Aparicio 02:40
I exited the media space after four decades, by force, not by choice, when I’ve seen Mike Tomlin, he is always that’s that’s his lead. Leads with that as all you have a hard time believing that. You know, having seen the videos of the way he has spoken of me and our friendship and our relationship, it’s based in if I were to text him right now and we were to speak, he won’t do it on text because he’s polite, but when we speak, he’s like when we play you guys again, man, when we play you next, cuz that’s the way he is. And when we play you next on Christmas week, so you can come in and mess up the Gingerbread, the eggnog, all the peppermint, the you know, all the scratch offs, all that stuff, um, it really has been an interesting football season. Before we get the lottery, we’ve got winners. We’ll have fun. But I love having you on because you are a Pittsburgh guy, and I would say this, you were slated here to be here today, and I don’t think that you would add a sore throat today had your team lost. It’s just that your team never loses.
Seth Elkin 03:37
Well, yeah, when we’re having a we’re having a nice run here, a better run than, frankly, I thought we were going to have this season. But, you know, I give this organization a lot of credit. They looked at what they had on the field the last couple of years, and they knew it wasn’t good enough. And they went into this off season and they they retooled, they retooled their their entire quarterback room. They said, what we’re getting out of that’s not good enough. Let’s get new quarterbacks. They knew they needed to do that. They retooled through free agency, which they typically don’t do in Pittsburgh. They’re not prone to doing that. They like to build through the draft. They drafted very well, although unfortunately, one of those draft picks, Troy foltana, was going to miss almost the entire season, but we were planning on having him to build the offensive line around, but that offensive line has been in flux. The quarterback has been in flux because Russell Wilson was hurt for a while. But it’s all come together. It’s built through the off season, through free agency, in the draft, and it’s come together a lot better than than I was expecting. I’m pleasantly surprised, I have to admit, Seth,
Nestor Aparicio 04:36
I will say this to you in defeat, and we’re only four weeks out on plane again here, but you know, by then we’ll have the Thanksgiving, the turkey, they will do all that. I’ll have like five crab cake tours, but the week of, I’m going to have you back on the week before to preview the game, because, I mean, you do a better job at doing it than like Kabali does when I have him on, and he’s always reticent to come on with me because of my special relationship with Coach Tomlin. I guess, but it it really has been. Last week, Luke got all worked up, drove up the mountain Sunday like it was a real slobber knocker game. And I would say this for the rivalry itself, and for what the Browns haven’t been, and for what the Bengals aren’t, and for what in other divisions they don’t have Atlanta and New Orleans and Carolina, they don’t have that in other places. And this Baltimore, Pittsburgh thing, when it’s red hot, it’s the best rivalry in the biggest sport, in, you know, like in the country, and when it’s 1816, and our guys missing kicks, and our coach can’t coach and our defense can’t play defense. And by the way, that would be the part for me, and I, you know, I did a lot of music this week, as I’ve talked about with the holiday and the long layoff and the hard bowl again and all that your team plays defense, dude. I mean, like when they get off the bus and I see those cats, I see what I see Hayward, I see fitzpad, I see these guys. And I’m like, those guys are player clean, even for what we didn’t get the love out of him, and he wasn’t much to roquan got here now roquan Looks like he’s eating too much pumpkin pie and he’s slowed down, and the safety situation’s a mess. They played Hamilton off the line of scrimmage the whole game and lost, and the kickers not right. And by the way, before I get in this, because I know you sold a lot of winning tickets to Maryland lottery at Royal farms. This is my royal farms inside joke for the week, and I did not write it. So if anybody royal Farms is mad with me, I’m just reading what I read on the internet. This happened after he missed the second kick. And you know, we there’s been a lot of Raven scratch off winners, I promise you, with Justin Tucker has won a lot of bets for people, we ladies won the Hall of Fame and all that, but misses the kick. I’m out talking about it like trying to be professional, and someone just puts up, Hey, Justin Tucker, less chicken, more kicking. And I thought to myself, I’m going to use that in my stick this week, even though it’s on the wrong side. But so congratulations to you, Mister Steeler, Mister Western PA. Guys down here helping out with the Maryland lottery. Seth Elkin is here sitting in for John Martin, who didn’t mind rubbing in the Browns victory a couple of weeks ago. He showed up that week somehow he had a chance that he texted all, no, I’m on the show this week. So he’ll be back the executive. And by the way, if you missed John last couple weeks, we did a whole thing on sports wagering and the money and how mobile it is. And, you know, I remember years ago, we talked about the casino side. We talked casino revenues up October and September based on sports wagering and revenue. But the lottery side of things that it comes to my desk, we look at like an almost $3 million winner last week in a game. We don’t talk about a whole lot you got. Thanks. Winning. You have all these holiday scratch offs. Mega Millions is changing some rules, and they’re doing special things. You get a lot of Lottery News sets. So I’ll let you get to it. Man.
Seth Elkin 07:51
Yeah, lots of stuff going on. And I think the fun one we’ll start with is that big fast play win that you mentioned, $2.9 million and some change one on a fast play VIP club ticket that was sold in Randallstown last week. Now the winner has not yet come forward to claim. We’re waiting on that. We’re waiting to celebrate with whoever that person is. But fast play games, if you’re not familiar with them, they launched about five years ago. We’re coming up on the fifth anniversary in February. So it was right before pandemic started, and I think that may have served to hamper the growth of these games a little bit, because it’s a it’s a ticket you got to go out to the store and buy and, you know, all of a sudden, you know, if everything shut down in early 2020, right after we had launched these tickets. But fast play games are very similar. To scratch off games, similar play styles, similar kind of thing, except there’s no scratching, and they’re printed on demand by the lottery terminals and vending machines, and you find out instantly whether you’ve won. And we’ve got a wide variety of different fast play games at different price points, ranging from $1 up to $30 this $2.9 million prize was on a $30 ticket, and it’s a progressive jackpot ticket. Some of the fast play games have a progressive jackpot, similar to what you would see if you went in a casino and you were playing a progressive jackpot slot machine, where you the prize increases with each play you make, until somebody hits that Jack.
Nestor Aparicio 09:17
So literally, it goes up every time a ticket is out, there’s a it’s not a daily thing. It’s literally it changes from seven in the morning to seven at night. Correct? From minute from minute to minute, just like a casino, we always see that number, right? Yeah. And the
Seth Elkin 09:30
the interesting thing there is that with with the progressive jackpot fast play games, you can go on our website and the the progressive jackpots on each of those games are updated every 15 minutes with what the number is. And of course, if you buy a ticket in person at the store, you’ll get the up to the minute jackpot amount printed right on your ticket. You’ll know exactly what it is at that moment. So somebody walked into a store in Randallstown and bought a $2.9 million Jack. Winning fast play VIP club ticket. And that’s a big one. That is the largest jackpot prize we’ve had on a fast play ticket in the nearly five year history of fast play games. The largest previous was 2.6 million on a different ticket back in 2021 so, so big prize, and we were happy to see, does
Nestor Aparicio 10:19
it take to get to 3 million bucks? I mean, that’s it was a long it’s a route without the big winner, right? It’s all
Seth Elkin 10:26
function of the sales and how quickly it sells. So you know, if the ticket is selling, well, it’s going to happen more quickly. And there are different starting points for those progressive jackpots as well. So the higher price tickets have a higher progressive start point and lower priced progressives. It starts at a little lower amount. Confused
Nestor Aparicio 10:45
me with all this math. You don’t want to bring that to me here. It’s
Seth Elkin 10:47
too much math for me, too. That’s that’s why I’m in the word business. I’m not. Hey, I
Nestor Aparicio 10:51
gotta get in the algorithm business. Seth Elkin is here. Give everybody your fancy title at the Maryland louder, because I’ll mess
Seth Elkin 10:57
it up. I am the Managing Director of Communications, so my team and I are responsible for communicating with the public, communicating with with players who have questions or comments about how the lottery works, and also dealing with media relations and public records and all sorts of matters like that. If you’re if you’re looking for information about the lottery, we’re your first point of contact. And of course, we also spend a lot of time out in the community. We’re at events, not so much quite at this time of year, things slow down a little bit, but in the spring and summer months, you’re going to find us out a lot at fairs and festivals and sporting events and charity events all over the state. Set up it with our lottery tent and our our watery prize wheel that you can spin and win a lottery item and maybe win a scratch off ticket, and have some fun with us when we’re out at events. It’s a big part of what we do is making sure that we’re out there, day in and day out, being part of the fabric of the community and interacting with people. It’s an important component of what we do. You know,
Nestor Aparicio 11:51
it’s interesting. You even bring that up to sort of, you know, unsolicited, because I have to think about my relationship with you, and how many lottery tickets I give away, and we’ll be at Cocos and fates and COVID, we’re doing this thing. And then I think, how many times I just run into your team at places I am, whether it’s some festival, it was 100.7 doing a crab cake festival, or my wife and I just happened to be at some wine thing, or I was at the Oyster recovery partnership. I just bump into you and your team. I mean food truck festival with Paul mana over so it happens couple times a year. Hey, Roz, let me spin the wheel, you know. So I It makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing and I’m out in the right places when I just bump into you guys out there. Alright, so let’s get Raven scratch offs, because we got to do this. You know, they’re in town. They’re out of town, the Eagles, all that stuff. The holidays coming up, we’re getting toward the end. I have plenty of these I’ll be giving away in December. And you know what? It’s okay, because John and I went through this. He doesn’t like when I say this. But, you know, any sniffers? You don’t have any descented ones this year. You have, you know, the peppermint and my bag smelled like gingerbread for a month, and into, like, February, I have was to, like, Valentine’s Day, my bag still smell like, like gingerbread. Um, but I have these to give away. And people always ask me second chance. I know the big New York trips coming up that we’ve given away, but there’s still, like, big, like, tickets for life, a lot of money if you win. There’s still password there’s a whole bunch of stuff still associated with the Raven scratch offs, because I’m going to be giving
Seth Elkin 13:14
these away, right as as you mentioned that with the the three away trip winners who are going with the team on the train up to New York for the December 15 game against the Giants, Leonard Brown from granite, Juan Garcia from Riverdale and Raymond Jones from Salisbury. That ought to be fun, because you have to imagine, that’s just going to be a beat down win for the ravens, because the giants are in complete disarray at this point. So, so that’s that’s a lot of fun. And I know the winners of that prize always have a good time, but you’re right. There are still two more drawings coming up in December in the Raven’s Second Chance promotion, including two spots to be a finalist for the Raven seats for 20 years prize. So in each of the two drawings, one on December the second, and the other one on December the 23rd there will be someone who wins, not only a finalist spot to be one of those people that has a chance at that prize, but also you get $10,000 for being drawn as a finalist. So you’ll win some cash no matter what. And then one of those people is going to end up with seats for 20 years, and we’ll do a reveal. We always have a nice event with the Ravens. After the football season’s over, probably in February. We’ll we’ll get with the ravens and have all of those finalists come either to the last year we did it up at the castle, and everybody they were doing all the construction, right? Yeah. So we might be able to do it at the stadium this year. We’ll see how that goes. But that’s always a really fun event for a special event for those players, for those, for our lottery players and chance to to reveal who wins that, that big prize of season for 20 season tickets for 20 years. But there are also $10,000 cash prizes that are still out there in these last two drawings. There are season ticket packages for next year, for 2025, and the fan of the game. We still have fan, fan of the game, prizes to give a. Way, where you win $1,000 from being selected, and then $1,000 for each touchdown. And fortunately for the ravens, they’ve only got one more game left against the Steelers. So
Nestor Aparicio 15:07
you mentioned that Giants game. That’s the one I want to draw right there. It might be five, six touchdowns be angry by the time they get there. You know, probably
Seth Elkin 15:13
going to score some touchdowns here the rest of the way, as I don’t want the Steelers game on it. No, I
Nestor Aparicio 15:18
don’t want that one. We don’t score a lot of touchdowns against them. They don’t score a lot of touchdowns against those. Touchdowns against us, and even they beat us. And by the way, this New York thing, I got to bring this up with you, because I brought this up with John that, you know, you see it. You’re like, Well, why not LA? Or simply, I’ve been to LA lately. I was in New York two weeks ago. New York’s underrated for me, and this speaks to, I know you a little bit off the air. I’ve been in your black and gold office with all the Franco Harris and Terry Brad, just all of that, Lemieux, all of that craps kid, Sid the kid, all that, all over your place. I grew up a Baltimore kid, honest, right? So like this Yankee Dodger World Series that happened, I remember Hayden Reggie and like Chris Chambliss nettles, my dad read the Bronx Zoo, it’s parking lot. All that. I never liked New York. I never saw the appeal of New York. I saw the grime of New York, not the shimmer of New York. And I went there for the first time in 1986 is a little music story. I covered the 1986 MTV Video Awards, the night that the cars won. All the awards. I met Andy Warhol that night, Tina Turner, the whole deal. Pictures backstage, the whole deal. Sean Penn and Madonna were like a thing that, and he was punching photographers, and I had a camera. So nonetheless, I’ve been going to New York, and I was syndicated at the turn of the century, and I used to do the show at Mickey mantles with Gary Bettman. Did two and a half hours with me. Did a whole show with me, taking phone calls from hockey fans in in the in the window at Mickey mantles. So like, Yeah, Bob Costa sat there. Joe Bucha sat there with me. So like, when I was syndicated, was I’d like New York, and I was there when George Bucha at the first pitch for the 911 all of that, right? I love New York now. So like, when I hear like New York trip, I’m like, Oh my God, if you don’t know, if you’re afraid in New York, you’ll never get anywhere. But you go to New York, and you get in there, you tell these winners, and you let them know they’re from all over the place. Pastries, I got them handled. If they need good pasta, if they need some good Chinese, any good Asian food period, you want some ramen, they want some noodles. I got it handled. And even the touristy stuff, I’ll take them up the Rockefeller. I’ll take them over to Radio City. I’ll walk their legs off les I was there two weeks ago. So New York’s a great place. Now, are you being a Pittsburgh guy? They weren’t like a rival, right? Like you don’t feel that way, the way I feel you probably had that feeling about Philly or something, right?
Seth Elkin 17:34
I think our rivalries in Pittsburgh were more along the lines of who we were in the division within football, it was the browns, the old browns, the original. They never won the when I was growing up, that’s rivalry was browns and Bengals and Houston Oilers. That’s the well
Nestor Aparicio 17:52
they look out football. Here we come, Houston Oilers. No, no. I mean the New York thing. I think it’s a great prize. And I just wanted to say, like, use New York. It’s right up the road. It’s better than any other city in the country by far to visit. So when I your trip to New York, I’m like, I’m in, I mean, during the holidays, and it’s right, exactly.
Seth Elkin 18:11
It’s a trip there the holiday season. It’s a special place to be. And I am headed up there for Thanksgiving. My sister lives in New York, so it’s a nice place to go. I don’t think I would want to live there, but it’s a nice place to go and spend a couple of days and a great opportunity for our second chance winners. So only
Nestor Aparicio 18:29
thing better than the pastries on Thanksgiving would be to be eating them in front of Macy’s for the parade. I don’t want to do that. My wife wants to do that so bad. And I’m like, it looks really cold. I you know, I like New York. I just don’t like to sit out in the streets. I hope everybody enjoys their Thanksgiving. Few more things with you on winners and different things that are going on. Mega Millions is changing some rules next year. We all know, those are the games my wife plays, Powerball. Mega Millions. You tell me which ones? Three, 400, million. And I’ll tell you. And we pull up the ROFO for chicken before the game. She’ll look I’m saying I’m gonna buy some tickets, you know. So my wife’s the dreamer on all that the Mega Millions about to change a little bit, and they’ve also added a little bit juicier during the holidays, right?
Seth Elkin 19:09
Yeah, well, Mega Millions, the jackpot, as we’re speaking, is more than $450 million so now’s a pretty good time to play. And we had somebody who I could live in New York on that dough, you know, just about anywhere on that we had, we had somebody who, who’s got a little bit of dough of their own in green belt, somebody bought a ticket at Green Belt shell for the November 19, Mega Millions drawing one a $40,000 prize. They had the Megaplier option on their ticket, which quadrupled the base prize of $10,000 to 40,000 that’s an extra dollar. Yeah, it goes. It takes your ticket price to $3 and that we got a winner of $40,000 in that drawing. And the jackpot still rolling four $50 million the Powerball drawings over $150 million so the two big jackpot games are rolling along. Here, as we get to
Nestor Aparicio 20:01
50 million, have to live in Jersey. I don’t know that I could afford it, you know. And who’d want to live there? You know? I’ll stay here, you know, rent and go up there. But it’s still huge jackpots in the mega give me the they’re doing some special stuff this month, right?
Seth Elkin 20:16
Yeah, we’ve got a promotion going on that’s connected to Mega Millions, you might win free groceries right in time for the holidays. There’s a promotion we’re doing. If you buy $10 worth of Mega Millions tickets at any giant store in Maryland, you could win enter your ticket, and we’re going to do it, do drawings. You could win up to $1,500 worth of giant gift cards. So it just so happens, perfect timing on on two fronts, we’ve got, first of all, a big, Mega Millions jackpot rolling along right now. So nobody needs too much incentive to buy their Mega Millions tickets when you’re over four, $50 million for a jackpot. But you know, it’s a perfect time too, because this promotion is going on all the way through December, so you could win some some free groceries right in time for your holiday feast. So check that out at empty lottery.com and then enter your tickets in my lottery rewards.
Nestor Aparicio 21:02
Well, I’ve been doing this 33 years. The 33rd Thanksgiving, it’s our 26th Thanksgiving year at W NST at AM, 15 $70 First off, I want to wish you happy Thanksgiving. I don’t know what tradition gins and Aunt have out in in Pittsburgh, but we do sauerkraut and kill boss the proper in my place. And you know, I’ll be out of wise markets. I got the free ham or the turkey, and my wife got a free turkey. At work last week, she comes home with a big butterball. It’s in the freezer, so like, I’m gonna go green bean casserole, even though she doesn’t like it, but the little onions are but here’s the most important thing I’ve been asking this question, you’re gonna be in New York? You said, with family? Are you pumpkin pie? Apple pie? Sweet Potato mince me, where are you going? And most important, a la mode, are you going? Like a nice whipped cream
Seth Elkin 21:45
for me, it’s got to be apple and I’ll take the ice cream. I’ve never been a big pumpkin pie fan. Say whenever this pumpkin spice thing happens in the fall every year, I’ve never quite connected with that. So it’s got to be apple pie and some ice cream on the side. All
Nestor Aparicio 21:59
right. On behalf of wise conversations and wise markets. I’m going to give you a I think it’s $2.99 it might be up to 329 for this half gallon ice cream. Okay, you know, wise makes their own up in the dairy up in Sunbury. I I put the hoodie on like Laverne and Shirley. I had a little pick thing. I got to take some chocolate off the line. What a soft serve. So I did the whole tour, which isn’t a tour thing, like, you gotta, like, know, some people to do this. I had an inside Tip three years ago when wise market started sponsoring me to get their cinnamon ice cream. Okay, this is very important if you love apple pies. It’s why you said you love apple pie. I wouldn’t even plug this if you well, maybe pumpkin pie too, because it works good. But the cinnamon ice cream, it doesn’t sound right. I mean, if you think like a really good Mexican restaurant fried ice cream, that was cinnamon ice cream a lot of times inside of that, over at the Hacienda Bel Air road back in the day, cinnamon ice cream makes every single warm dessert that you will have through the holiday better, and it’s three bucks. Get it. Trust me, you’ll love it. All right, is that good?
Seth Elkin 23:06
I will file that away. I’m on my way out to the store now. So, all
Nestor Aparicio 23:10
right, hey, man, I’m just you. Help me. I’m trying to help you. You’re from Pittsburgh, and I’m trying to help you. Think I would lead you astray if I didn’t like you, I’d tell you to eat that tea berry with Yin said that have up Pennsylvania, that pink Pepto Bismol actually tastes like birch beer, if you let it go, but, but I’m not a teaberry guy, but I’m big on a cinnamon ice cream Seth Falcon is here. He is with the Maryland lottery and gaming. We didn’t talk any gaming. We did that last week with John Martin. We’re encouraging everyone please here through the holidays, a lot of football, please gamble responsibly. I see all of these stories and terrible things are happening. One 800 gambler, if you have a problem, and if you’re enjoying yourself, keep enjoying yourself. And if you want to come out and enjoy yourself with a free scratch off from the Maryland lottery, we’re going to be doing the Maryland crab cake tour many, many times in December, beginning on the fourth at Cocos. And the eggnog will be delicious there as well the crab cakes and the fried shrimp. Seth Elkin, thank you very much. Next time we get together, hopefully the ravens are beating up on the Steelers. And that would be Christmas week, and I wouldn’t want to disturb your holiday there that week. I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. Enjoy the music chats we have here and out at Baltimore. Positive we’re celebrating Thanksgiving around here, and hopefully a horrible third victory for John not Jim back from more Baltimore positive right after this.
