Norwegian lottery mistakenly reports many large winnings

The Norwegian gambling company Norsk Tipping apologized to thousands of users over the weekend after erroneously reporting large winning sums to players during the Friday night Eurojackpot drawing. The wrong amounts were corrected by early Saturday morning, and no customers were paid the high amounts accidentally reported, Norsk Tipping's CEO Tonje Sagstuen said Saturday. Sagstuen stepped down in response to the massive error and personally apologized for disappointing so many players, which she described as a small consolation. Many people reached out, saying they had already made plans to vacation or renovate their homes before being informed of the error, she said.

Norsk Tipping Chairwoman Sylvia Brustad emphasized the need to rebuild the public’s trust, having broken it after more than 75 years of serving the public. Tipping is determined to clean up operations and make the business better, she said Saturday after meeting with leaders of the government’s Ministry of Culture and Equality.

How did this happen? A manual error in the gaming system’s coding caused several thousand players to have wrong winning amounts reported to them, Sagstuen said. Tipping receives the prize amounts from Germany in Eurocents, which are then converted into the Norwegian kroner and shared with players, according to a separate Friday statement. A manual error was introduced into the game engine during the conversion process, causing prize amounts to be multiplied by 100 rather than divided by 100, the statement explained.