All Hail The Queen

One of last year's best viral marketing stories in the bowling industry was, quite literally, the luck of the draw.

The odds of one specific card in a deck of 54 (four full suits and two jokers, if you're wondering) not being pulled until 52 other cards had been picked are astronomically low—a fraction of a fraction of a percent. You're more likely to see a couple dozen 300 games rolled in a single league night.

And yet, that's precisely how a side-game-turned-sensation played out over a wild year at Beaver-Vu Bowl in Beavercreek, Ohio. Along the way, hundreds of thousands of dollars of raffle tickets were sold, thousands of people pushed the fire code limits of the center's confines and parking lot, and one lucky winner walked away a millionaire.

"It was like something out of a movie," said general manager Wendy Figer, who has been a fixture at the Dayton-area alley for two decades.

It all started pretty simply. The center began selling $1 raffle tickets for their version of a popular weekly card game called Queen of Hearts. In the game, two jokers are added to a full deck, which are adhered face-down to a sealed board. At the end of each week, the tickets are gathered, and if yours is called, you get to pick a card from the board. If it's not the queen of hearts, that card is removed, you win a little prize money, and the remainder carries over to the next draw and the next week, with more tickets sold as the game continues. Once that red lady is pulled, the winner takes home the jackpot ($1,199 in the case of that first game), the board is reset, and the whole process starts over.

The kicker, however, was that Beaver-Vu decided to roll 40% of the ticket sales of each board into the next, creating a compounding initial pot amount from week to week to week. And nothing was stopping the pot's growth as that elusive card continued to go undrawn. Ohio law dictates that if 100% of the purchase of tickets for a game like Queen of Hearts goes back into the contest, then it's deemed a game of chance and not subject to the same taxes of regulated, profit-backed gambling sales. That also means that Beaver-Vu wasn't allowed to make any money off the thousands of tickets sold every day. Their success would be measured in food and beverage sales and anything spilling into open bowling and league interest.

As the amount to win increased with each successive board—especially after the games that lasted longer—word began to spread, and ticket sales skyrocketed. The next board went 26 weeks before a queen of hearts was seen. Beaver-Vu started using a higher percentage of sales to put into the prize pool. The fifth board went for 42 weeks, paying out $57,000.

And so came the fateful sixth board. After the previous game's payout, the pot started at $25,000. A few weeks went by. Spades, clubs, and diamonds fell by the wayside. After a few months with no queen sighting, weekly raffle sales climbed above $10,000. Figer hired staff specifically to sell tickets. People would arrive in groups to buy dozens or hundreds of chances.

By the way, almost all of this was happening via word of mouth. Beaver-Vu spent no extra marketing dollars beyond their usual social posts and a few in-center announcements. There was no better lure than ever-increasing odds to win an ever-increasing jackpot.

Towards the end of board #6, Figer met three ladies who had driven three hours, rented a hotel room, and ride-shared to the center just for the chance. Figer had to talk to the local police and fire departments about crowd control because the number of people who would show up had outgrown the alley's limits and spilled into the parking lot.

"We couldn't have sold more beer than we did," Figer said. "Those last few weeks, I had eight bartenders, plus two more with a beer wagon. It was like throwing the biggest block party you could imagine, every week."

In the lead-up to the final week, Beaver-Vu sold $261,000 in tickets. The ticket rolls were being delivered on pallets. Speakers were set up in the parking lot so attendees could hear the numbers being read out. The five people dedicated to a reduced menu in the cafe were pushed to their limits, so they hired a food truck to handle the added demand. People would show up at noon for a selection that didn't start until 8 pm, playing cornhole, eating lunch, and waiting for the chance to witness—and maybe even win.

"It was nerve-wracking, to say the least," said Figer, reflecting on the day the winning draw finally happened in week 50, when just five cards remained.

By then, the sheer volume of entries sold required her to have a custom-made tumbler. It was capable of holding half a million tickets and weighed 400 pounds. The security company they hired out of safety concerns patrolled a crowd of more than 1,200 inside, with more outside, including some who had spent the night to secure a wristband for admittance. It had gotten so big it was decided that a winner would be crowned no matter what that day.

A few minutes after 8 o'clock, the first ticket was pulled. Ace of clubs. The next? A queen! But of spades. The crowd buzzed, trying to will the winning card to the top. The following card was a 9 of clubs, leaving only two more on a board that had first begun nearly a year prior. At 8:30 pm, the owner of the raffle ticket that was called was escorted inside by a group of supporters shouting, "Make way! Make way! Here he comes!" That man, who has chosen to stay low-profile since winning, made his choice. Figer picked it up, glanced at it, and announced to the masses: queen of hearts.

Pandemonium.

The crowd exploded. The winner was mobbed by his friends, suddenly richer by $1,034,737. Tears flowed. Champagne bottles popped. Finally, it had happened.

"The pure joy! Oh my god!" said Figer, laughing. "There was nobody there who thought, 'Oh man, it wasn't me.' It's just pure positive energy and excitement. And then we still had to tell everybody we had another board!"

In the aftermath, the staff took a month to decompress. They made t-shirts that read, "I Survived the Queen of Hearts." They had introduced their alley to a new group of customers, many of whom would come back for open bowling and dinners on Monday nights, now regulars of a different sort. After the wild highs of the past year, it felt good to take a step back and reflect.

"We all kind of went on a bender, it felt like," said Figer. "This consumed our business. We needed to get back to what we are for a bit."

Beaver-Vu had never seen anything like it. In her last order before the big draw, Figer had to order 2.2 million tickets to ensure she had enough. And still, they ran out. At its peak, they sold 491,000 tickets in a single week.

They also learned a lot along the way. They decided to put some stopgaps in for future games, including points that trigger automatic draw-downs until a winner is found. But mainly, they learned to be adaptable. Something that gets that big and fast can overtake you and your business. But if you're willing to bet big on your ability to draw in customers in with something they like, and if the odds fall in their favor, you can roll with it and make a splash in more than just sales—you can bring people through your doors that otherwise might never have done so.

"I not only have my bowling family and bowling people here, but I also created another family of Queen of Hearts people," said Figer. "It was a hell of a ride."