Please, STOP Playing
FOOLottery!'s incredible success may also be its ultimate demise. Please help us.
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FOOLottery!®
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Dear Fools, Given the unprecedented success of FOOLottery! on its first day,
we never thought we'd be coming to you on bended knee and,
regrettably, asking you to please, stop
playing! As
you know, we've sold more than 15 million tickets. That's
right... 15 million FOOLottery! tickets. You cannot fathom what
that means for our charity partner, Bereft. It's ecstatic. Unfortunately, the overload of buying has caused some technical
glitches and has us in an anxious position. Therefore we must ask
you to please, please stop playing. Free ticket snafu Unfortunate financial oversight What none of us expected was that our promotions, promises and
cutting-edge features like "Play Now, Pay Later" would result in a
landslide of ticket sales on FOOLottery's first day. Auditor Anthony Price at Morris Hankel now tells us that if
someone actually wins this thing today, we'll have to pay out all
the revenues, PLUS 10% on top of it all. We now estimate that 25
million tickets will be sold before the 4 p.m. drawing, and that
means we'd have to come up with $12.5 million of our own money.
That's right -- $12.5 million, assuming that money
existed. The ideal outcome We bet that there could be other possibilities, too. Your
suggestions are welcome. We will be working all weekend on
this. Admittedly, what you are about to see below is an enticing link.
By law (U.S. Gaming Code, USC Section 42 (3)c -- "Lottery operator
must provide equal and open access, verbatim, on every public
release, disclosure, or promotion of said solicitation of services
offered"), we are obliged to show this to you one more
time. But for the love of all that is good and Foolish, for our
kids even, please do not act on it. Please stop playing
today. Thank you for not clicking that link. Fool on. David and Tom Gardner
The brothers Gardner tell CNBC that they
are now
"pleading with people to stop purchasing
tickets."
We owe you an explanation.
First, if you haven't received your free BUDDIBonus
Tickets, we apologize. We were able to e-mail everyone on the
referral list -- more than 63 million people at last count. Like
you, they have played and will pay later. However, given the
traffic jam on our e-mail servers, we have been unable to send you
your free tickets. We'll iron out that glitch in future
games. For businesses that don't thrive on community, this might
lead to major legal action. Thank you, Fools, for
understanding.
At this point, we have to level with you. The second far
larger and, yes, unforeseen problem is the financial burden of the
110% payout. When we first came up with the idea for FOOLottery!
some days ago, we really did dream of making good on our promise to
pay out 110% of revenues. We assumed high volumes of ticket sales
and the attending mass influx of customers into our other services
would get us there, and our lenders at Third Federal as well as our
auditor, Morris Hankel
LLP, agreed with that thinking.
In light of all this new information, we have brainstormed
several possible solutions:
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