Every year, millions of euros go unclaimed for lack of an identified winner. But this time, the story took a spectacular turn in the Netherlands: to find the holder of a ticket worth €1 million, the Staatsloterij chose a method that was, to say the least, unexpected: a publicity plane.
An unclaimed jackpot – and the idea of a plane
Recently, the Staatsloterij (the Dutch national lottery) was faced with a problem: a winning ticket worth almost €1 million had still not been claimed, several weeks after the draw. The problem? The ticket had been bought in a shop, making it impossible to identify the holder.
Faced with this uncertainty, the lottery took a rare – and spectacular – decision. Rather than wait passively like the Belgian National Lottery, it decided to send an advertising plane over the region concerned, carrying a banner asking the winner to come forward.
An unorthodox but effective solution
Using an aeroplane to broadcast an advertising message in the air may seem extravagant – even excessive – for a simple lottery. However, this method of communication has proved effective on several occasions. The attention generated in the locality was enough to encourage the ticket holder to come forward.
But this example is just one of many. Every year, dozens, if not hundreds, of lottery winners fail to claim their prizes – particularly when the tickets were bought in a shop. In such cases, the winner’s identity is not recorded, making it very difficult to trace them.
At the end of 2024, while the Oudejaarstrekking (New Year’s Draw) was underway, the organisation relaunched the search for thousands of unknown winners, for a total of several million euros still unclaimed.
The lottery reinvents itself
It’s a story that might make you smile: a plane, an advert in the sky, and a winner who wakes up – rather belatedly – from his dream. However, it highlights a real problem: in a system where paper tickets circulate freely, anonymity and forgetfulness can deprive people of considerable sums of money.
The Staatsloterij’s decision shows that it is possible to combine creativity and pragmatism to resolve these impasses. But in the long term, it raises the question of a more modern, more secure system that would prevent a jackpot from remaining, literally, in the clouds.