Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports
Many sports teams harness 50/50 raffles to raise money for a good cause while giving fans the chance to head home with a sizable amount of dough. That includes the Milwaukee Brewers, who have ended up on the receiving end of a lawsuit filed by a couple that claims they weren’t able to cash in after their winning number was called.
The game itself tends to be the primary source of entertainment when you head to a sporting event, but most teams offer fans in attendance plenty of options when it comes to enhancing their enjoyment.
That includes the ones that give spectators the opportunity to leave with significantly more money than they had when they arrived if they’re able to win a 50/50 raffle, the popular fundraisers where tickets are sold to increase a jackpot that’s usually split between some sort of charitable organization and whoever has the number that is drawn.
Those raffles can offer some impressive payouts. As far as I can tell, the biggest one in MLB history was the 50/50 the Blue Jays organized during their World Series run in 2025, which resulted in one fan winning a little over $25 million (~$18 million in American dollars).
That was just a little bit more than the approximately $26,000 total collected at a 50/50 raffle the Brewers organized a few years ago, but they’ve been taken to court by fans who assert they were robbed of their winnings.
Brewers fans are suing the team after missing out on a 50/50 raffle prize worth around $13,000
During the 2023 season, Milwaukee sold 50/50 tickets at home games to benefit the Brewers Community Foundation, which included a showdown with the Cubs on July 7th.
According to WISN, Annette and Matt Flynn, a married couple who reside in Kenosha, Wisconsin, entered that raffle and learned they’d won around $13,000 after the winning number was called midway through the sixth inning. They missed the initial announcement, but they scrambled to find the table they had to report to in order to cash in after checking the matching digits on a phone.
Based on the rules at the time, they had until the middle of the seventh inning to redeem the ticket before the team pulled another number.
Surveillance footage captured Annette scrambling through the stadium while trying to track down the table in question. That journey took her from the upper deck in left field to the concourse behind home plate and included an interaction with an usher who botched some directions, and she was ultimately informed she’d arrived “66 seconds late” and had subsequently lost out on the winnings.
The Flynns decided to sue the Brewers after turning down a settlement, and while the team got a win last week after an appeals court ruled it “has sole discretion in awarding the prize,” the couple says they plan to take the case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in their quest for justice.
It’s worth noting the Brewers have since changed the terms of the 50/50 raffle, as winners now have a 30-day window to redeem the winning ticket.