One of our players recently sent us a question that sparked a really interesting discussion. I’ll share it here on the blog, in case you’ve wondered the same thing: Why aren’t expiration dates printed on lottery scratch tickets?
The woman who emailed us said she’d recently tried to claim a prize from an expired ticket and she was frustrated that she couldn’t still cash it.
In our reply, we explained that there are a lot of factors in when a particular scratch game will end, and the timing of some can’t be predicted. That’s why it isn’t possible to assign a hard and fast end date to a scratch game when the tickets in it are printed.
For example, when the last top prize in one of our scratch games is claimed, we stop sales in it. We don’t want a game on the market if you don’t still have a chance to win a top prize in it! But we don’t know when the last top prize will be claimed -- that all depends on when someone will buy that particular ticket.
Sometimes we have specially-themed games that are only on the market for a short period of time, such as our holiday games. Those games come off the market in January each year because it just wouldn’t make sense if we were selling a game like “Merry Crossword” in July! (We work hard to keep the odds of winning the same in those games as they are in others that are on the market for much longer.)
And at other times, if a game has been on the market for some time and players show us through their (lack of) purchases that they prefer something else, it also will be removed from the shelves.
We have dozens of games for sale at any one time, but there are only so many bins for tickets in our vending machines and slots for tickets in our dispensers. That means some stores simply don’t have enough room for all the games on the market, and the retail location can then decide which games it wants to sell.
We keep all the details about our games on our website, including game rules, a list of the scratch games currently available in stores, a list of the games where distribution has ended but prizes can still be claimed, and a list of games that have officially ended.
We’ll keep doing our best to come up with fun, new games to replace those that are ending!
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