CASHING IN
Saints fans were lotto winners
St Mirren were forced to withdraw their new lottery tickets from sale – because too many people were winning cash prizes.
It was February, 1980, and just weeks after the launch, Saints commercial manager Neil Bennett recalled all unsold tickets from local shops.
The Paisley club had initially been delighted with the response until they realised that an overabundance of ticket buyers were winning certain prizes.
Thousands of lucky Buddies had hit the jackpot, and Bennett insisted the club faced losing even more cash if they didn’t take urgent action.
He said: “It has been a most unfortunate happening, but we are recalling the tickets as fast as we can.
“It is impossible to say how many have been sold, and we won’t know until all the recalled tickets have been returned to us.”
Bennett pointed out that there had been a virtual flood of £10 lottery winners, and added: “A printer’s error has meant that there has been an incredible, and quite ridiculous, amount of prize money being won. You could call it a bonanza.
“We discovered it very quickly. Far too many people were winning £10 prizes, so we got in touch immediately with the printer, then decided to withdraw the new lottery, and withdraw the tickets.
“We simply cannot pay out the fairly substantial sum of money because there is a legal limit to what we can distribute under the existing conditions.”
But Mr Bennett had a bonus for Saints supporters. He said: “Replacement tickets will be on sale by the end of the week and the club has decided to honour all the winning tickets from the previous lottery.”
Despite the incident, Mr Bennett felt that Paisley people would respond to the new tickets, which were the first in Scotland to be designed exclusively for a club by the club itself.
The 25p price tag was to remain, with £1,000 still the top prize. However, the club brought the total number of prizes up to 21 by adding a £250 prize, and extra £100 and two additional £25 prizes giving a total of more than £4,000 up for grabs. There was also a special mystery prize.
The Saints Lottery and St Mirren Lottery had originally been launched with 12 panel cards before changing to the two-game tickets.
Between the two games, 80,000 tickets were sold each week and from the £10,000 made on each, £4,000 went directly to the club.