Toronto Blue Jays still wondering who the lucky $2.87 million 50/50 raffle winner is

A wonderful Blue Jays fan attended the highly anticipated season home opener on Tuesday April 11th against the Detroit Tigers. Apparently, the fan also had a kind and generous heart and decided to purchase $100 in 50/50 raffle tickets to help support the Jays Care Foundation. In doing so, the $100 donation gave the fan 250 chances to win the raffle jackpot. 

Little did the person know that such generosity led to their winning raffle ticket for a grand jackpot total of $2.87 million, making them one happy instant millionaire for sure. However, it has been almost a week now, and that one lucky fan has yet to come out to claim the jackpot. One thing that is a known fact was the ticket was purchased between 6-6:30 pm on April 11th in person at the stadium.

The Jays Care Foundation have been running the charitable 50/50 draw over the past couple of decades, with the proceeds going towards helping children and youth with life-changing, play-based programming to minimize the opportunity gap that existed in marginalized communities across Canada. Initially, the 50/50 draw was only available to fans attending in-stadium, with raffle tickets being sold up until the 7th inning of the ballgame, and the draw being held in the 9th inning. Typical jackpots ranged between $50,000 to $150,000, depending on the day or weekend they were held.

In the past few years, the 50/50 draw has expanded to include also online purchases, in addition to in-stadium purchases, as well as pooling all purchases within the homestand month to have one grand jackpot, typically in the millions, along with other raffle prizes.

In this case, maybe the fan has been lazy and hasn’t had the chance to check their tickets, or maybe the fan has been busy planning what to do with the money and wanted to wait for the excitement to settle a bit and regather themselves first before taking any action. Or perhaps the generous fan’s main intent was just giving the donation to the foundation and never really bothered in keeping the ticket at all. Nevertheless, if the winning ticket goes unclaimed within six months, the grand jackpot amount will be donated back to the Jays Care Foundation.

So either way, at least someone will end up being a winner!