Still No Edmonton Oilers $15 Million 50/50 Winner After Servers Were 'Overwhelmed'
Talk about adding insult to injury. there's still no winner for the latest Edmonton Oilers 50/50 after the website had difficulties keeping up with demand. The bad news comes after a gutting disqualifying loss by the Oilers and they will pick a winner for the money soon, but it's not clear when.
The Edmonton 50/50 on Friday, August 7 for the Oilers vs Chicago Blackhawks game is without a winner right now and that's a lot of money still up in the air. The hotly anticipated, record-shattering jackpot of over $15.2 million drew in so many fans that their system started malfunctioning.
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"Due to unprecedented demand, our technology provider's servers were overwhelmed with requests to purchase tickets. At certain points, demand for tickets exceeded $100,000 per minute," said the Oilers in a press release Saturday, August 8.
"This traffic load caused certain issues including slow loading times, geo-location errors and duplication of some orders," they said. "We were able to adjust for capacity throughout the event."
They're currently trying to patch up the system and respond to customer issues — as a result, the picking of the winning number has been delayed. Still, they say the draw's "integrity" is intact and a winner will be picked soon.
The winner of the grand prize can expect to take home half the multimillion-dollar pot, with the rest given to the team's community foundation.
The confusion and grief of the 50/50 draw came on the heels of a nail-biting 3-2 loss for the Oilers.
Despite their loss, the Oilers were favoured to win — Edmonton was the fifth-seeded team in the Western Conference. The Blackhawks were 12th seeded.
"We made some critical mistakes at the wrong time & they went in the back of our net," said Oilers coach Dave Tippett. "It's frustrating because we expected better."
Meanwhile, the team's Twitter became flooded by people claiming the system duplicated their ticket orders.
"I only received error message after error message and to my horror, I have been charge for every attempt to the tune of $250!!" wrote one commenter.
"I was planning on spending $50, and ended up spending $200," wrote another.
The team has since apologized and is working to fix the issues and pick out who will be the next millionaire in Alberta.