Three months ago, SV Borger’s Ferrari lottery ended. Proceeds: 550,000 euros for a new club building. But that triumph was preceded by sleepless nights and panic. “We sold seventeen lottery tickets in one day. That doesn’t make you happy.”
At the end of the year, the association looks back on panic, media frenzy and an unexpected turn of events. Head coach Arne Joling is enthusiastic when he talks about the new club building. It’s almost there, the official opening is on January 24. But three months ago that future was still uncertain. In fact, things were looking pretty bleak by mid-summer.
“It started very enthusiastically in March,” says Joling. “A Ferrari as the main prize, lottery tickets costing ten euros, and we had to collect three hundred thousand euros. It went well for the first few weeks. But then it came to a standstill. Maybe because of the summer holidays, I have no idea. But it stagnated quite a bit.”
The head coach says that panic then struck. “You start calculating scenarios: what if it stays like this? What if we have to report to the board that we are short of a huge amount? How do you explain that to your members? Then you get into very unpleasant conversations. And rightly so. Ultimately you have a plan for a club building and if it falls apart…”
Sleepless nights? Joling: “For some of us it really is. One is a bit more cold-blooded than the other. But for all of us it was true: you wake up with it and go to bed with it. Especially because everyone is a volunteer. You do this in addition to your job, it’s all a labor of love, waste of paper. But the responsibility is enormous. It was a thrill.”
The lottery team did not give up, says Joling. “Be proactive! How do we get out of this?”
The breakthrough came when the Telegraaf picked up the story. It went viral, other media joined in and within a day the phone was ringing off the hook. Joling: “We were everywhere. At RTV Drenthe, at Radio 2, 538, Veronica, PowNed. I almost became a full-time spokesperson. Our back office saw sales increase per minute. It went from seventeen lottery tickets in a whole day to tens of thousands of euros in a few hours.”
The hectic pace was so great that the volunteers changed their schedules. “You have to ride that wave, because such a hype only comes once. It felt like we were on an express train, no idea where exactly we were going.”