A Swiss man won a million and then lost it on Saturday, when a televised Swiss lotto draw went chaotically wrong.
For Andreas Bürkli it would have been a lottery dream come true, when his name was pulled out of a drum and announced by German singer Herbert Grönemeyer.
Swiss public TV channel SRF apologised after declaring him the winner, explaining that a mistake had been made due to technical problems.
A new draw will be made and the winner will find out after Christmas.
Swiss website Blick tweeted the moment that Mr Bürkli's win was declared on Swiss German TV show Happy Day, complete with ticker-tape fanfare and a briefcase loaded with cash.
Riesen-Panne bei #SRFhappyday - der «Gewinner» bekommt die Million am Schluss nicht. Laut SRF ist @swisslos schuld. ?????? pic.twitter.com/8bdBpeT78f
— Blick (@Blickch) December 22, 2018
Here's how it went wrong (we think)
- Potential winners paid 10 Swiss francs (£8; €9; $10) to enter and sent their tickets back to lottery operator Swisslos in the hope of winning the CHF1m jackpot. Ten lots were entered into the final draw.
- As Herbert Grönemeyer and TV host Röbi Koller prepared for the draw, the names of potential winners rolled on a screen behind them.
- All 10 in the draw had to be ready by their phones. More names were held in reserve to be added if someone was not contactable.
- One of the 10 was not contactable and another had a phone number missing, so the organisers moved on to lots 11 and 12. As lot 12 was not contactable they passed on to lot 13.
- At this point there was confusion as only nine names appeared on the screen.
- With time running short, a lotto official rushed in and mistakenly put 11 lots into a drum manually.
- Mr Bürkli's name came up and Herbert Grönemeyer rang the phone number. There was no answer.
- The show came to an end.
In a later statement, a Swisslos official apologized and said the draw had to be carried out manually because of technical problems. "In the hectic rush", it said 11 names were loaded into the drum rather than 10, and the extra one had been drawn.
The official stressed that according to the rules the man declared the winner was not eligible because he had not picked up his phone.
Asked how Mr Bürkli had accepted his moment of lottery misfortune, the Swisslos official said he had taken it very well: "You could even say he was a good sport."
Define "good sport"...
"good sport" is a professional who understands these things happen. When humans are involved in something then some things go wrong on occasion.
I would be PO'd not a Good Sport.
One of those "Congratulations and we're sorry situations"!
Why should I check the winning number of the past 10 years? Is the winning ticket the number in the past 10 years? Request help answer, I hope to get everyone's reply, thank you for helping me solve my question.
WOW. You'd expect this type of needlessly convoluted drawing procedure and spectacular failure in a third-world country, not Switzerland.
Maybe some of the lottery employees were trying to rig it, but they didn't plan it and practice it enough. It is extremely suspicious that a phone number was missing and several people in a row missed their phone calls.
Wow
"mistakenly put 11 lots into a drum manually"
Is Swiss some place in Connecticut?
"The official stressed that according to the rules the man declared the winner was not eligible because he had not picked up his phone."
So the guy wouldn't have won even if the drawing didn't get messed up. We'll never know who really missed out on the money because it was somebody who didn't get called because they drew a different name by mistake.
With cell phone technology today, many people have unknown numbers or spam callers blocked from ringing on their phones.
It may have come through that way and he just didn't answer or it was blocked.
He would have been disqualified anyway since his was the 11th ticket put in by mistake!
I think Donald Trump was conducting the drawing.
Don't bother checking your "winning number" of the past 10 years.
That ticket expired.
This happens all too often in casinos when the Jackpot WINNING SLOT machine is called invalid for technical reasons.
Pro-Player & FairGame Advocate
What really happens is that people play slot machines millions of times every day, and once in every 100, 200 or 500 million times there's a glitch. If the glitch means they should have won but don't know we won't hear about it. OTOH, every single time there's a glitch where somebody thought they won a lot of money but didn't we hear a lot of whining from them and other people who think every mistake in the world should be decided in their favor.
This story was posted on Jun 16, 2017 Lottery Post News.
Katrina Bookman captured national attention last year when she played a "Sphinx Slot Machine" at Resorts World Casino in Queens, New York, and it appeared as though she'd won $43 million — which would have been the largest jackpot ever won on the slots in U.S. history. She excitedly snapped a selfie with the screen, believing her life was forever changed.
But when Bookman came to collect her prize, a casino worker told her she hadn't actually won anything and offered her nothing but a complimentary steak dinner and $2.25.
https://www.lotterypost.com/news/313259