Lottery embarrassment for Danske Spil

The Danish and international mainstream media is having a field day with a Danske Spil boo-boo in which the national lottery sent an email to 300 people telling them they had won billions. The problem was – they hadn’t.

Danske Spil ‘accidentally’ sent the emails congratulating them on being billionaire lottery winners, triggering dreams of wealth and happiness all round, which lasted for an hour before the error was discovered and everyone returned to the real world with a bump.

The man in the hot seat was Danske Spil spokesman Thomas Roersig, who had the unenviable job of explaining how the glitch occurred. Unfortunately, he was not particularly forthcoming, saying only:

“Three hundred of our lottery players, who won the lottery, the Keno, received a message saying they had won a sum in the billions. And they never won that amount. We are of course very sorry. We have now written to them to inform them of the sum that they really won.”

Roersig said that many of the winners were angry and disappointed by the error, but most took it well.

AFP reported that one of the Danes caught up in the debacle, Flemming Dahl, told the Nordjyske newspaper that he received an e-mail informing him he had won the equivalent of US$3.8 billion

“My heart leapt and I started thinking of all the things I was going to do with the money: take my family on holiday, buy a new house, a new car,” he reportedly told the site.

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