Ryanair slammed for ‘Fly to Win’ charity scratch card where odds of winning are 1.2BILLION/1…. and only small percentage of the profits go to good causes
RYANAIR have been slammed for their "misleading" charity scratch card game where players have an estimated one in 1.2BILLION chance of winning the €1m jackpot.
The heavily stacked odds are a staggering 26 TIMES higher than your chances of winning the National Lottery, and are largely a result of a bizarre twist in the game which can only be discovered in the small print.
The budget airline's lottery game has also been criticised because it is sold on the appeal that a portion of the profits go to charity, when only a small percentage of the cash made actually reaches good causes.
Each year one passenger who has purchased a Ryanair scratch card is pulled out of the hat and is in with a "chance" of scooping the top prize.
However, the "lucky winner" is then invited to a room where 125 envelopes are laid out across the table and just ONE of them has the €1m prize inside.
This final element to the draw is not mentioned by staff trying to flog the cards
Ryanair has claimed the other envelopes all contain €50,000 and so a huge sum of money is still up for grabs.
They also say at least one car a month is won in the draw and there are other cash prices up to €5,000.
The chance of the winning the jackpot, which in the current climate amounts to around £900,254, is estimated to be slightly more than a 1.2billion/1.
The number has been worked out based on claims from former cabin crew who have said roughly 15 tickets are sold on each flight.
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Ryanair, who have refused to reveal how many cards they sell each year, boast of operating 1,800 flights a day.
That means players have a roughly one in 10m chance of being given the opportunity to pocket €1m.
If they make it to that stage they then have a 1 in 125 chance of picking the right envelope to claim the jackpot.
When all of that is multiplied together you end up with the jaw-dropping near-impossible odds.
In contrast the chance of winning the National Lottery is 45million/1.
The odds of scooping the Ryanair jackpot also dwarfs Paddy Power's price on Elvis still being alive at 2,000/1, and of Dean Gaffney winning an Oscar at 1,000/1.
The revelation comes after it emerged that Ryanair passengers will have to pay a £6 fee if they want to check in more than four days in advance of a flight.
Just over a week ago boozed-up stag do revellers had a mid-air brawl on a Ryanair flight.
The controversial game attracted media attention last year when Facebook user James McKelvie slammed it as "utterly cynical".
Ryanair sell the tickets on the appeal that some of the profits are donated to charity, but Mr McKelvie found that just 0.3% of their scratch card profits from 2013 were donated to good causes.
He added that the firm sold €16m worth of tickets that year.
Campaign group Ryanair Don't Care allege the percentage donated has now risen to 2%, but claim the price of the cards has increased from €2 to €4.
Ryanair has claimed that in the last 5 years scratchcards sales have generated over €2million for good causes including Childline and SOS Children's Villages.
The figure represents 200,000 a year in donations despite the fact they sell an estimated 10million scratch cards a year in what is billed as a "charity game".
A spokesperson from the group said: "It is totally unfair to create a charity scratch card game which is pretty much impossible to win, and to use the idea of charity to make more profits.
"They say they can't reveal how much they make from the tickets because it is commercially sensitive but I doubt that."
A spokesman from our gambling site partner SunBets said: "If those stats are correct then they are selling nearly 10 million tickets a year, and from that number of tickets only 1 goes through to the final draw.
"From there you are still 124/1 to win, no wonder it’s never been won.
"It means that if I get on board a Ryanair flight today and buy one ticket, the chances of that ticket scooping me the jackpot is over 1.2 BILLION/1.
"To help visualise that, image you have to toss a coin and have it land on tails 30 CONSECUTIVE times. Every time it doesn’t, you have pay 2 euros.
"Try it. By the time you’ve spun it to land tails 30 consecutive times, inflation will have made 1 million virtually worthless and you’ll have spent over a billion getting it anyway! Plus you’ll be dead.
"The only thing we’d be prepared to offer such astronomical odds on would be to pick a particular date for the world to come to an end on.
"You can have TWO billion/1 on that if you like, no-one getting paid out even if it happens."
A Ryanair spokesman said: “We don’t disclose scratchcard sales for commercial reasons.
"However, you have misunderstood our scratchcard prizes, which include thousands of cash prizes (up to €5,000), free cars (at least 1 per month) and a chance to participate in an annual draw with a 125-1 chance of winning the €1 million top prize, but a certainty of winning at least €50,000.
"Over the last 5 years our scratchcards sales have generated over €2 million, which has been donated to 50 charities across 12 different EU countries covering a wide range of hospitals, schools and child welfare fund raisings.”