Buyers offered chance to void purchases
Draw delayed after ‘unprecedented’ lottery demand swamps ticket system
The winner of this past Friday’s massive Oilers 50/50 draw won’t be known until later this week as the club’s foundation is giving ticket buyers more time to void purchases.
The Edmonton Oilers Community Foundation announced Monday that ticket buyers have until noon Thursday to void any purchases made during the online raffle, which soared to more than $15 million Friday.
The program faced numerous technical issues following huge demand, including some people being charged multiple times without first getting a confirmation.
Ascend CEO Daniel Lewis said the server couldn’t keep up with the demand, which he described as unprecedented.
He said he hopes to maintain the integrity of the raffle by offering participants this chance to void purchases.
“We continued to stress the servers throughout the entire series and add more capacity but to give you a sense (of scale), the demand for tickets on Friday was orders of magnitude higher than tickets for Wednesday,” he said. “There is nothing in a system that is going to be prepared in a matter of days to go from running up to $1- to $2-million lottery events throughout a number of playing games to running seven or eight times that kind of number.”
Lewis said his company’s system is meant to withdraw funds after someone receives a confirmation on the website along with an email and a ticket.
Participants in the Friday raffle will be emailed over the next couple of days. Those who request to have tickets voided will have the transaction reversed back into their accounts, Lewis said.
Anyone who received multiple email confirmations and charges can forward those to Void5050@ Edmontonoilers.com. The same email can be used to cancel any tickets.
Those wanting a copy of their ticket confirmation can email their first and last name to Confirm5050@edmontonoilers.com.
Anyone who has already tried to void their ticket purchases will have to follow these steps as well.
A winner will be drawn once all requests have been received.
Edmonton resident Nick Stasiuk said he intended to purchase one set of 200 tickets for $50 but didn’t received confirmation the purchase went through. He attempted several more times and was eventually charged $350.
Stasiuk said he’s planning on getting a full refund and won’t be participating in the raffle again.
“As far as I’m concerned, this draw is compromised,” he said. “I don’t trust it anymore. This has frustrated me to no end.”
Technical issues plagued the raffle since the NHL restarted its pandemic-delayed season in Edmonton last week. However, the draw continued to set record jackpots. The Aug. 3 raffle reached $3.2 million, followed by a $5.4-million pot this past Wednesday.
Prior to this, the 50/50 jackpot usually came out to around $87,000.
The prior largest jackpot on record was $336,000 on April 12, 2017, during the first-ever playoff game at Rogers Place. The option to allow online 50/50 raffles was announced in July by Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis.
Over the four recent hockey games, the foundation sold more than $25 million worth of 50/50 tickets. Friday’s game set a new record previously held by the Raptors in the 2019 NBA finals, which had a jackpot of $2 million, according to the foundation.
Natalie Minckler, the foundation’s executive director, said the 50/50 exceeded everyone’s expectations.
“We’re extremely sorry,” she said. “We do apologize for the confusion and frustration experienced but we have been working extremely hard with our foundation team and Ascend since we started this on Aug. 1 to resolve the issue. While there is an opportunity, we want to make sure that we get it right.”
Minckler said she has no idea how much of the jackpot will be left once all the refunds have gone through but suspects it will remain a record amount.