Ryanair ‘Scratchcard’ scam or not?

Ryanair run an on-flight scratch-card, where flight attendants ask if anyone wants to buy one for €2, with a % of that money going to charity and a prize of €1,000,000 up for grabs, along with other cash prizes and cars.

On November 5th this post on Facebook started to go Viral:

This post basically states that Ryanair are using the charity aspect & the difficulty of actually winning to primarily make profits with reportedly only 0.3% of income going to charities.

But the Ryanairdontcare campaign website said: “We believe a high percentage of profit is kept by Ryanair.”

To win the big prize you have to scratch a Yes on the card then enter a draw online.

If you are the lucky one passenger a year to be picked, it’s not over.

At an event you have to pick one of 125 ­envelopes – only one of which holds the jackpot cheque.

The rest contain €10,000. Ryanairdontcare claims Ryanair sells about 15 scratchcards per flight.

At 1,600 flights a day that would add up to an ­estimated £12.5million. The site wants an investigation.

Ryanair said: “Our scratch cards continue to generate very significant funds for charity.

“Over the past six years we have donated well over €1million to charity.”

“The information in this Facebook post is entirely speculative and false. The author has no basis for his fanciful and inaccurate guestimates. “

“We don’t disclose how many scratch cards are sold, as this is commercially sensitive. However, over the past five years Ryanair has donated over €2m to almost 50 charities across 12 different EU countries. These charities cover a wide range of hospitals, schools, child welfare and sports club fundraisings. Over the last 12 months alone more than €500,000 was donated to charitable causes.

“Over the last five years the €1m top prize has not (yet) been won, but over €1,500,000 has been won by Ryanair customers in free cars and cash prizes.”