Have you ever missed out on a massive win? Losing or misplacing a winning lottery ticket is a HUGE problem and it happens more often than you might think.
Most often winning tickets simply get lost and other times players simply forget about the purchase and fail to check if it’s a winner.
The bottom line is that, when combining both secondary or jackpot prizes, hundreds of millions worth of lottery winnings are never claimed.
We are going to take a look at the biggest unclaimed prizes of all time. And the size of some of these unclaimed prizes will shock you!
We’ll also share with you where these tickets were bought. Who knows, maybe you’ll notice that one of these vendors is the place where you previously bought a ticket.
But, best of all, I’ll show you a safe way to play the lotto that guarantees that you will never lose another ticket again. Additionally, this service will ensure that you are notified when you win, just in case you’ve forgotten to check for yourself.
So, make sure you read till the end.
After a lotto prize goes unclaimed for a certain period of time, what happens to the money varies depending on the particular country and lottery. In the United Kingdom winners have 180 days to come forward with the winning ticket to claim the prize, but in places like Ireland winners only have 90 days to claim their winnings.
In order to claim their lottery winnings, players must produce their winning tickets at an outlet and will then be paid out accordingly. If they have won jackpot prizes then players must contact the lottery operator directly to begin the claims process.
If the winner has not come forward before the deadline then all the prize money is donated to charitable causes around the region. These include initiatives for arts and culture, sporting organisations, charities assisting the destitute and other charitable causes.
So depending on where the unclaimed lottery was bought, the winnings will be donated to charitable causes or other community initiatives in the area that the winning ticket was sold.
Research has shown that the majority of unclaimed lottery winnings is made up of smaller wins which when combined reach into the multi-millions annually.
But sometimes the unclaimed prizes are jackpots that are valued well into the multi-millions. Because of the high value of these prizes, jackpots are very rarely unclaimed.
Most of the biggest unclaimed lottery jackpots are from tickets that have been bought in the United Kingdom or America, but lottery prizes go unclaimed across the world every day.
Below are the biggest unclaimed lottery jackpots at the time of writing.
The majority of unclaimed lottery winnings are from tickets bought across the United States. This is because most of the lottery tickets in the world are bought by players from the US. There are seven states that have been recorded as having the most unclaimed lottery tickets sold.
The second most unclaimed lottery tickets are bought across various UK territories, with England having the most unclaimed lottery tickets bought annually.
Below are the states in America where the most unclaimed lottery tickets are bought.
Below are the areas in the United Kingdom where the most unclaimed lottery tickets are bought.
Looking for where exactly an unclaimed lottery ticket was bought can be difficult. The unclaimed ticket can usually only be traced after the lottery operator has made an official announcement to where the ticket was bought, and often this information will not reach the person who bought the ticket in time to claim the prize.
Players will let their unclaimed tickets expire for a variety of reasons including forgetting that they bought a ticket, misplacing their tickets or incorrectly checking their results.
So is there a way that players can make sure their tickets never go unclaimed and that they can always make sure to bank their winnings?
Read more about the unclaimed lottery winnings in South Africa for a better idea of how much winnings go unclaimed in other parts of the world.
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