John Martin of Maryland Lottery toasts the season and local winners as football grabs our attention for the holidays
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
ticket, game, year, browns, prize, lottery, play, winners, flacco, win, ravens, cleveland browns fan, maryland, scratch offs, week, jackpots, football, powerball, fun, big
SPEAKERS
Nestor J. Aparicio, John Martin
Nestor J. Aparicio 00:01
Back at W n s t tassel Baltimore and Baltimore positive Happy Holidays everybody out there I am. Just you know what Thanksgivings over Thanksgiving ends when the gravy is over. My wife makes all these leftovers you run out of the green beans and we saw broth and run out of the corn and we subscripted but once you run out of the gravy, it’s over with but I’ll tell you what, it’s crabcakes season. We’re going to be Coco’s on Wednesday we’re going to be at gertrudes famous world famous gertrudes crabcake never add one as well as the vegan crab cake with Councilwoman Odette Ramos on Thursday. Friday we’re going to be Hollywood casino in Perry Ville. And then Tuesday State Fair over in Catonsville so brought to you by the Maryland lottery. I am on my last batch of ravens scratch offs Ross has given me some most gingerbreads as well as some pepper mix. Some holiday scratch offs we’re gonna have next week at state fair when we get the foreign data on the 15th we get the y’s markets up and honey go later in the month, as well as a failure is also brought to you by our friends at window nation. 866 90 nation I’ve got the wind today shirt on Today I’m working some stores in 2022 window nation as well as our friends at Jiffy Lube. Multi care. This guy put the show on the road a couple years ago Sometimes he comes out and has crab cake with us. Most of the time though. He’s doing the executive director ring things of all things marital lottery, and gaming. And the gaming is important because I’m going to Hollywood casino this weekend. My game is terrible. This this this football betting thing, John, this is difficult. I was 20 games up. I’ve been leveled back down to two games over 500 As we head into the holiday season, but I’ll tell you what, between playing games and winners and losers and I was winning there for a little while. It’s a fun time of the season. I know you guys get all fired up about stocking stuffers and doing it responsibly and all that stuff. Happy holidays to you How was your Thanksgiving
8
John Martin 01:47
Happy Holidays YouTube. So that was very good. Went back to the land had some time with family got a chance to meet my new grandson. Our third grandchild, our daughter graced us with a bouncing baby boy. So that was that was fun. Did the grandpa thing and came back here to to a holiday season which is action packed. And you talk about the sports wagering, holiday scratch offs. Lots and lots of things going on love to talk to you, too, with about all of them. So you know, let’s spin the wheel. Where do we go next?
Nestor J. Aparicio 02:22
Well, let’s start with this ravens because they’re on by this week. I had a handful of these left. I was running low on them. I was over Coco’s though. They’re running low. And I said, like get the new tickets. And people could still play these. And when these No, we have the big Jacksonville trip coming up for the winter and a couple of weeks. But you still have some big doings on the football side, in addition to the fact they’re playing at home next week, you’re gonna have competitions out on the field as well.
John Martin 02:43
Yeah, that’s the fun part. And we talked about it all season long. You know, when people purchase either the $2, or the $5 ravens ticket from one of our lottery retailers and if it is a non winning ticket, they’re eligible to enter those non winning tickets into our my lottery rewards program for Second Chance prices, some of them experiential, one of the lifetime type things like for instance, traveling with the team on the team plane, there’ll be two lucky winners of that and their guests headed down to Jacksonville. That is going to be a huge game. Come December. They’re
Nestor J. Aparicio 03:14
8all sitting here. Right? I mean, the Ravens? Hey, I brought this up. Joe Flacco is your quarterback.
John Martin 03:22
How about let me see if I’ve only been here 12 years. Let me see if I can do it. Right. Do flaccid, you? Did that did that sound
Nestor J. Aparicio 03:30
my favorite close? I mean, I love Joe and I’ve text Joe this week. My favorite Joe things when he did the commercial a little first mayor in a bank and said Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh. That was you and I can at least agree on that. Right. And
John Martin 03:43
he has a little Flacco is running around in the commercial. So yeah, he’s been as we are speaking now I’m not aware of you’ve got inside information I’m not aware of he has been officially named. But for all that is holy in this world. Please let him at least go and if he fails, he fails. But please, we need a professional quarterback. I
8Nestor J. Aparicio 04:06
was gonna say you’ve seen this story in Thompson rod like nice kid. You see, like, not ready for that. And that would be the thing for football. I’ve talked football all week with folks. We all sat around Thanksgiving. We watched all day Thursday and Friday and the what there were enough quarterbacks to go around when they’re healthy. They start taking the burrows out. You start taking the cousins out, you start and all of a sudden people were like, well, who’s gonna beat Lamar at this point? I’m like, man, they’re nine and three, he might be playing Joe Flacco in a playoff game like Joe’s inherited a situation where the defense hand the ball off, maybe throw it around a little bit, certainly not going to be mobile. I thought Joe was in his 40. He’s only in his 30s. So we still have that going for you, John, I want to make that clear. But from the football perspective, you talk about taking a plane ride down to Jacksonville and what the seasons represented for the Ravens. Doesn’t get much better than nine and three here right now. I mean, it is it’s a great football time I think for Baltimore football fans.
John Martin 04:58
Is a great football time. for football fans all over the country and those that choose to play at sports wagering, we hope they play responsibly. And as you alluded to, sometimes you’re up sometimes you’re down. You know what Nestor, I think, are you betting with your head or your heart? When you’re looking at these? I
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:15
have to go complete head on this. And that’s what makes it impossible because it doesn’t do you any good. Because last week has nothing to do with this. My wife has been telling me that for Yeah, exactly. I mean, so you can say analyze this, analyze that. But I don’t know, especially with the younger teams. And I go into this thing, where who are the teams that are improving like, Houston looks like they’re becoming a better team. Cleveland’s been a better team than we thought, Pittsburgh, they’re like the character in Halloween, you could stab and you can’t kill them. I mean, they just keep they keep sitting back. I’m coming back to life, no matter how bad Kenny Pickett is, or whatever. But I there is something about football on a week to week basis that it is very, very difficult to predict. And I think that that’s what over the generations is made. It’s something people want to wager on or be involved in. But we really are talking about the first time and local humanity where it’s being measured it the state’s benefiting from this. It’s as I always say, on the up and up and I remember this time last year, we’re fighting to get this thing to Mobley. It feels like it’s been over a million years,
John Martin 06:17
8John. Yeah, we just turned over the first year anniversary of mobile wagering it was the day before Thanksgiving last year, Wednesday, and now we’ve gone through the Thanksgiving weekend. And and it’s been reported. So people who track Maryland lottery and gaming news items have already heard me say this or read about it, we are on pace to at the end of the fiscal year, probably contributed $45 million, which is a little over where we thought we would be. So clearly the momentum is there. Last year, we contributed about $25 million to the blueprint for Maryland’s Future Fund. It
Nestor J. Aparicio 06:53
wasn’t 25 to 45. But I want to make people clear on this because of the new, the newness of it and all of that promotional money, that 45 would probably equal 60 In a level set world, right? Like if the gambling doesn’t go up next year, the revenue to the state is going to be higher than 45 Next year, no matter what, right? We’re
John Martin 07:13
kind of seeing the benefit of that. Now. You’re You’re right, in theory, and we’re kind of already seeing that benefit now going back 25 to
Nestor J. Aparicio 07:19
45, because that was to issue more than 23 issue. Yeah,
8John Martin 07:23
it was there was the first year. So now that we’re gonna ramp up on the second year here, it’s it’s probably will be consistent, I think, mid 40s. I can’t imagine more entrants into the sports book pool contributing significantly that growth, we have 13, retail 12 Mobile sports books, we have a couple more in the pipeline, maybe we get another five to six over the next several months, because people are still working to get their their houses in order to do that. But I don’t think it’s going to appreciably change the market. So well, we’ll have some fun with it. We’ll continue to work with that we again, hopefully if so people have a plan, stick to it. That with your head, not with your heart if you can. And sometimes it’s tough to do, but enjoy it. And please play responsibly.
Nestor J. Aparicio 08:09
Absolutely don’t don’t listen to what Kurt Warner says, I’ve been watching the commercials. And I do think and we’ll talk about this much. I think the industry unto itself. I mean, you can’t protect people from themselves. And we’re all big boys and big girls, we’re all adults here. But I do think all of this really has come with like the cigarette cart and with the caution on it. You know what I mean? Like there has been a caveat for everyone who Gamble’s to slow your roll Know your limits. It’s an especially last year is a new thing. And I you know, I see a million people’s Twitter’s and stuff like that. And I have seen people say I gotta slow down, you know, like just too many games too much, whatever. And for me and I said this to Christian Horton, who will be my guest, as well as Amy and John and all the folks up at Hollywood Casino. Tom Kelso is going to be joining us up now. Because you know, I said, I’m picking every game, right? So I’m picking every game every week for fun, like the way I would do it at the newspaper the way I did it on the radio here in the 90s. But you wouldn’t bet that way. You know what I mean? You would pick the games that you would pick. And I said next year, I may do it differently. Because I don’t know that it’s like, I want to pick all the games to see how I do. But if I were going to have a game that I bet $10 on instead of $5 on that you would want to strategize you would want to have it if I were if I were playing with real money, I wouldn’t be betting all the games. I guess that’s my point is to think more like, well, if you had real money, you’d be a lot more responsible about this than trying to pick every game.
John Martin 09:36
Well, clearly there’s there’s information out there and we hope that people take advantage of that and understand the games that they’re playing in the odds. You know, you talk about understanding the games and the odds. I really enjoyed the conversation last week you had with our homerun riches winner Barbara and her husband. That was that was good old fashioned radio and compelling. Television is well to kind of watch this story play out. And just as a footnote to that, you know, we talked about homerun riches, which was a $5 fast play game. It closed officially yesterday, our last progressive jackpot winner, over $108,000 was claimed last night. And so now we’ll put Homer Riches on the shelf, it will be put on the truck to go to spring training. And then we’ll dust it off for next year. But it’s great to kind of come full circle with that. And so your your your show last week with Barbara was very timely. Hopefully people enjoyed it and Nate should look forward to a new version of Hallmark riches come next season. Damar
Nestor J. Aparicio 10:40
8is here. He’s the Executive Director of all things Maryland lottery and gaming are going to get away some Ravenscraft have a handful of these left, but I’m going into the holidays here this weekend, we’re gonna be doing the crabcake toward a bunch of places. It’s actually saving the homerun riches because it’s my 25th anniversary and I’ve been ramping things up beginning in August and sharing some memories of the big charity thing. All the charity we’ve done out on the front of the website right now all that’s brought to you by curio wellness and foreign data, we’ll be visiting them on the 15th as well. What do you do for 51? Because I’m I’m beginning to worried about 26 being a little stale. But you had all of these 50th anniversary approaches. I have a handful of the old lottery tickets that I that I had from the spring that I still have left that I’m dipping into my bag of leftovers at this point. Still good tickets, no 50th anniversary, but you did the 50 5050 Grand with Barbara and Bob last week. What do you do for home enriched the top that because the baseball contest next year baseball is gonna be as relevant as it’s ever been once you went 101 games the way they did? You know, that’s
John Martin 11:39
the challenge. That’s the same question. I asked our product team, our development people as you know, I’ve sequestered them I’ve locked them in a room, undisclosed location. I said, don’t come out until you come up with something bigger and better for next season. But yeah, it’s tough when you have all your energy is focused on a watershed event like a 50th anniversary like a 25th anniversary. You know, a little bit of the air comes out of the balloon, right? You’re kind of feeling like not gonna
Nestor J. Aparicio 12:06
allow that I’m gonna make 26 better than one five. You and
John Martin 12:09
you should you’re young, you should do that. Well,
8Nestor J. Aparicio 12:14
winners next year, I mean, it’d be a bummer if homerun riches is only like worth 25,000. You know what I mean? The this is the problem, John, people, if you raise expectations for people, you know, the bar has been raised on the field and off the field. Right?
John Martin 12:26
Yes, success. You know where else? It’s fun. Have you ever thought Nesta as have I driving the highways and byways of life? And look, can you see one of these big 18 wheelers from you know, different license plate than you are thinking whereas, what kind of life is that you’re on the road? You know, 82 hours a week, whatever. It seems like
Nestor J. Aparicio 12:44
it’s romantic back in like when smoking the bandit was doing what’s the J in the bear like 40 years ago? I don’t know sleeping in the cab. Maybe one night it’d be fun. But do you look up and Chattanooga doesn’t sound like a place for me? Yeah.
John Martin 12:55
8Do you think winning $100,000 would help that.
Nestor J. Aparicio 12:58
I think that would get me off the road. We
John Martin 13:03
we had a Georgia trucker on his way from Atlanta to Hagerstown, stop and refuel and decided to to buy a Maryland lottery $30 scratch off with called $100,000 cash. It’s called $100,000 Cash, because in fact, $100,000 cash, but lots of them. Normally, we do a $30 ticket. We may have a $2 million top prize and three of those. But everyone’s Why would like to stir the pot and for a $30 ticket. We offered 6565 $100,000 prizes. And this gentleman from Georgia was one of those winners, we now have 50 $800,000 prizes still remaining. But yeah, imagine that, you know, you’re driving in
Nestor J. Aparicio 13:50
information to Maryland lottery. Because you always say no. Listen, I go to casinos, people are playing to win. They’re not there to give their money away. I know people by scratch offs, it’s fun and but they want to win. They want to feel that juice they want value they want. Even when I give tickets for free when I’m out in the crabcake door, they love winning. You have more winners this way. But more than that, like if you know how many golden tickets are out there, right? Like the one cup it gets. I would say for sophisticated players. They like a good horse player. They seek these opportunities, right like this $100,000 progressive was going to a homerun. I didn’t know about it. You know what I mean? Like we need to, but you can know about it if you’re married a lottery and the lottery.com and you can maybe game yourself a little bit better to try to win one of these big jackpots. Right?
8John Martin 14:36
Absolutely. And then there is a method to that madness. And yes, players should go to MD lottery.com. They can find out if they want to if their scratch offs is their thing. Great. Go to the scratch off section. Look at all the games this week we launched three games, kind of a numbers theme at a $2 price point. We introduced a game called triple 333 top prize 13,000 $333 See what we did there Nestor, we use that three threes. Yes, that’s a lot of threes. I did $5 scratch off this week is called winning seven. Wait for it top prize $57,777. And then the final new offering this week is called Electric eights at a $10 price point, top prize $88,000. But when you go to the website at NBA lottery.com You’ll look at all these games you look at their playstyles you see a picture of us who’d be able to recognize in the store and find out how many top prizes are in the game, how many are still remaining. And and be able then to plan your spin accordingly. And the same thing you write goes for fast play games, especially the progressive jackpots, you’ll be able to see how they increment that’s updated, basically real time so you know exactly what you’re you’re playing for, as well as of course, the traditional megamillions and Powerball both incidentally, in general be pleased to hear this. Both are over $350 million. Wouldn’t that be a nice holiday
Nestor J. Aparicio 16:00
wise market to do some shopping because we’ve been eating turkey leftovers for five days. So next time she’s in the wash. She’s gonna pick up one of those tickets, Powerball and Mega Millions. Shawn Martin is here. He is executive director of all things. Maryland lottery games, we have truck driver winners. We have scratch offs, we have the season. Do we still have like giant winners out there that your way? Is there a million dollar ticket out on the Eastern Shore, you’re still waiting for somebody to come in and claim offers? I know when I talked to Doug, you guys get a tick tock on this stuff. Right? Like where you get down last 30 days of that window of 180 days to claim a prize. You’re starting to think hmm, you know, maybe this person will won’t appear.
John Martin 16:38
Yeah, you know what? I don’t have them at hand. But yes, you’re exactly right. Every once in a while a prize kind of slips through and, and players have 182 days to claim their prize. And if it starts to get close to the end of that we will put out an APB on our all of our retailer locations and and use the media channels the Hey, there’s a million dollar prize still to be claimed in this part of the state. So check your tickets. But yeah, that’s Can you imagine someone just flooding a million dollar prize? Go right by them? No cheese?
Nestor J. Aparicio 17:16
8Like they just didn’t know about it. You know what I’m sure like they bought a ticket and and John, my wife’s guilty of this she’ll buy tickets sometimes. And we’ll only watch the news and say item when the winner was in Nebraska. Okay, you know, so I didn’t win. And that’s why I’m so like, every time I give one of these out, so maybe like barcode app, Second Chance get involved because that that is the beauty of a lot. There are very few tickets you sell if if any at all their one chance tickets, right? Literally. Oh, absolutely. I
John Martin 17:45
mean, you’re right people chase a $350 million Mega Millions or Powerball jackpot not recognizing or maybe not realizing there are nine other prize tiers to to be claimed, depending on what combination of of the Powerball and Mega Ball in the in the numbers you happen to have on your ticket. So you’re correct. Have the app download the app, that’s the easiest way to do it. You know, it’s it, it goes along with you, you can scan your ticket, both scratch offs, as well as the draw game tickets to see if it is a winning ticket or a non winning ticket. And then, yeah, well, plan accordingly. But But absolutely, people should should check. In if they’re not comfortable with the app, they can check it at retail with a with a device that’s located there near the terminal just as easily to see if it isn’t winning ticket.
Nestor J. Aparicio 18:33
One thing I’ll say giving these out to 1000s of people over the last couple years at the crab cake tour, I give them out to folks, I don’t often know exactly how they’re played, I have to sometimes examining people can get a little confused. But the one thing it’s not confusing when I give it 10 chances to win. It says 10 chances to win right on it. So I think that a lot of people think old school, I get three numbers. That’s the only chance I have. I think that that’s the beauty of the modern lottery, in addition to the fact that I don’t even know how to know how to play the game or think about it too much. I can literally check on my app. And my wife’s made that very clear to me. I’m like, That’s kind of cool. Because sometimes you’d be scratching it say, Did I win? Or did I not? You can know for sure whether you want or not without asking me? Yeah.
John Martin 19:17
Yeah, absolutely. You want to make sure that the players have a good experience and, and part of experience is certainly the entertainment value that you have for that moment that you may want to dream about, but about a top prize, but it’s also making sure that they’re not frustrated or a player doesn’t feel confused or, or be little because they didn’t understand the game. And that’s why we encourage our retailers who are partners, they’re not our employees there. There are people that that sell our products, we encourage them to provide, you know, top levels of customer service. That’s why our self service machines all have a ticket scan or ticket check on them. So if you don’t want to interact with a person because you’re too embarrassed, you can again, flash your ticket underneath the scanner on a self service vending machine. We have about 2000 Some of those around the state and it will immediately tell you if that ticket is a winning or non winning ticket.
8Nestor J. Aparicio 20:05
And if it says C and D lottery, you got to call John and Doug go get the big check down there. Executive Director all thanks Maryland lottery and gaming, it’s still a Browns fan. Go back to football here. Do you have any confidence level that the Browns are gonna play a game in January because I mean, it’s about as good as it gets. Being a Browns fan. I’m not being disrespectful. The Flacco thing aside, it’s been a good year to be a Cleveland Browns fan. Right?
John Martin 20:32
Let me tell you and this is an anybody who may be on the network here who is a Cleveland fan are from Cleveland. Let me tell you what Clevelanders are conditioned to think. This week we are seven and for this week, potentially Joe Flacco will be the starting quarterback. I can tell you right now with a high degree of confidence. Flacco will play he’ll do well they’ll beat the Rams, they will continue on their their march to suck to that point where maybe there’ll be a game behind. Well, if they win, they’ll be a game behind the Ravens but there’ll be in that point where maybe they’ll even even with the ravens, and then two things are going to happen. They’re going to go into New York and play the New York Football jets. On a Thursday night game. Aaron Rodgers is going to live onto the field and beat them with four touchdown passes. They will then go the following game needing to win to get into the playoffs. And Browning or whatever his name is from the Bengals will throw four touchdown passes for
Nestor J. Aparicio 21:25
the Browns do not they bangles, the Bengals don’t round the Bengals bundle. Right. Exactly,
John Martin 21:31
8exactly. All right. Flacco will get hurt. They’ll have to bring in PJ Walker with the chance to win a game and they will horribly lose they’ll probably be tenant seven and be out of the playoffs. That is what a Cleveland Browns fan is conditioned to believe. There you have it.
Nestor J. Aparicio 21:47
I saw the Browns go out to Denver two weeks ago, and I was watching the game and I saw the jerseys. And it was just that moment. Like I love Ernest Byner. He’s a friend of mine. He’s been on the show many times. It just just seeing him out there with the Broncos made me like whoop, boy, you know, and I’m not even a Browns guy. But I know history. I was a part of that.
John Martin 22:08
I can tell you exactly as going every Cleveland Browns fan. I can tell you exactly where I was when that ball landed on the turf. Yeah, we were at a party at my house and the room was full of people watching the game. It went from crowd cheering to stone cold silence in a roomful of people.
Nestor J. Aparicio 22:27
I think I’ve told you this before the first time I ever went to Cleveland. I went with the great Phil Jackman. On a Sunday morning. It was the day of the drive. The first game I the first day I was ever in Cleveland. I went to that church right on the square. Everybody had browns, a dog masks on Hanford minimal stone
8John Martin 22:42
church, old stone church is the church you went to.
Nestor J. Aparicio 22:46
We had a beautiful sermon in which the Browns well that day and they went out no way drove 98 yards on him. So we’re still talking about 40 years later, John Martin is here. I don’t know if he’ll be back next week. After that I I’ve tried to be nice about the browns. And I mean, Flacco is their quarterback I can’t even hate them the way I should cut out play responsibly. If you’re enjoying the football season. If you’re gambling please do that responsibly. And by all means, come on out. Join us for the crabcake tour and get involved in this season and grab some tickets from us, John and we have we have we done all the orchestra here for the Maryland lottery we need to do today. Is there anything I need to know coming down the pike for Christmas?
John Martin 23:20
You know what, again, everything we’ve talked about Enmore at MD lottery.com Holiday scratch offs are in play Reva SiC is still available. Experiential prizes still available, including season tickets for 20 years as a second chance offering. jackpots are rolling at Mega Millions Powerball fast play tickets are available. I think we just about cover all the bases. Next week. I’m
Nestor J. Aparicio 23:45
going to give you the opportunity to lecture my wife’s parents about the hazards of taking stocking stuffers for people under the age of 18. And my in laws. They’re all there, the people you’re trying to get to. So John Martin is here He is the executive director of Baltics Maryland lottery gaming. We’ll talk about my my wife and her sisters elicit childhood in New Hampshire back in the 80s. i We’re gonna have a crab cake tour Coco’s on Wednesday. gertrudes on Thursday will be up at Hollywood casino in Perryville. On Friday and then on Tuesday morning at State Fair gonna be joined by a couple of great friends that has closers from cruise bottom afford, as well as Bill Cole from from coal roofing who puts the ROFO coffee into our cup around here I am Nestor we are wn st am 1570, Towson Baltimore. More scratch offs means more winners will the Maryland crab cake tour stay with us?
