Montana Lottery Glitch Creates Extra Winners, Officials Vow to Honor All Wins

A technical issue has caused the Montana Lottery’s Montana Millionaire game to create additional winners at a much higher rate than usual. The lottery has since suspended the game to fix the glitch, but promised to honor all existing tickets. The Glitch Created Thousands of Winners As it turns out, the Montana Lottery glitch caused the Montana Millionaire game to produce instant-win prizes at an increased rate, resulting in roughly 11 times the usual winners. This happened just when the Montana Millionaire raffle launched on Sunday, November 1. By the time lottery officials noticed the issue and put Montana Millionaire ticket sales on hold, thirty minutes had passed and some 12,919 tickets had already been sold. As it turned out, the hype for the game was huge, with local news outlets reporting that people had been lining up outside gas stations early in the morning just to buy tickets. With the increased rate of winners, the Montana Millionaire game minted some 2,010 instant winners. To put this into perspective, this means that roughly 1 in 6 players became a winner. For comparison, the intended rate of wins was to have 1 in 74 tickets win. While the extra wins were caused by a malfunction, players should rest easy because the Montana Lottery promised to honor all wins. With 991 prizes of $100 and 1,019 of $500, this means that the Montana Lottery will be paying out a total of $608,600. To top it all off, the lottery plans to replenish the instant win prizes, providing new players with higher chances of winning. Existing tickets will also retain their chances of winning one of the grand prizes next month. Bally’s Intralot Will Cover the Costs Bally’s Intralot, which powers the lottery, promised to cover the costs incurred by the glitch. According to the Montana Lottery, the fault lay with Bally’s Intralot’s new central gaming system, which was introduced in September. Despite being extensively tested, the system seems to have buckled under the weight of the incredible demand for Montana Millionaire. Anticipation for this game was great, since it provides players with two chances to win by buying a single ticket. When players buy a Montana Millionaire ticket, they can win an instant prize of $100 or $500. Then, all tickets are entered into the main draw, which, as the game’s title suggests, can net players up to a million dollars. The first such drawing is set to take place on December 28 and will feature six prizes of $1 million. Montana Lottery officials lauded Bally’s Intralot for agreeing to cover the costs caused by the glitch and doing what is right. As of the time of this writing, the lottery has yet to announce when Montana Millionaire sales will resume.