The Seattle Seahawks 23-0 win against the New York Giants on Sunday made everyone in Washington state happy, except for Jet Chevrolet who will now have to cash out $35,000 to 12 people, The Seattle Times reported.
Jet Chevrolet, a car dealership in Federal Way, Washington, ran a promotion during a four-day period in which anyone buying a vehicle would automatically win 100 raffle tickets from which 12 winners would be paid a lump sum of $420,000, or $35,000 each, if the Seahawks shut out the Giants during the Sunday game, according to The Times.
Ironically enough, the Jet Chevrolet ad ran during the promotion displayed a scoreboard of 24-0, off by a measly one point.
"This is crazy," Jet Chevrolet owner Jim Johnson told ESPN.com, "We never expected that we'd actually be giving away the money."
The contest ran from Wednesday to Saturday though Johnson initially wanted to run the giveaway during last week's game against the San Francisco 49ers, but said certain measures hadn't been met in time to run it, ESPN reported.
One of those measures was that Johnson had to open the contest to everyone, including those who did not buy vehicles, but those people were only allowed one raffle ticket.
Luckily for Jet Chevrolet, Johnson took out a $7,000 insurance policy to cover the grand total, according to ESPN.
Ads were run on local sport radio channels and in the local paper, the News Tribune, leading to 20 car sales, with the buyer receiving 100 tickets each. Another twelve people who did not purchase cars also entered the giveaway with one entry each.
The drawing is set to take place later in the day on Monday, with Johnson waiting on instructions from the insurance company on the correct steps on dealing with the turn of events, according to ESPN.
"We're a car dealership, we're not used to doing something like this," Johnson told ESPN.
Ads were run on local sport radio channels and in the local paper, the News Tribune, leading to 20 car sales, with the buyer receiving 100 tickets each. Another twelve people who did not purchase cars also entered the giveaway with one entry each.