The winner of a Chesterfield Football Club promotion giving away a place at the club’s pre-season training camp was found to be fake by eagle-eyed supporters.
The League One club ran a £20 prize draw offering the chance to join the team at a pre-season training tour of Hungary but when a paltry four people entered it appears that the club decided to create a fake winner, John Higgins, who unfortunately became ‘too ill to travel’.
There were already rumblings on fan message boards that something was fishy about a winning fan that nobody had ever seen or heard of. So when the club posted a press-release last week about the poorly winner pulling out of the trip and stated that “as a gesture of goodwill, all those who entered the raffle are entitled to a refund” suspicions were raised and fans questioned why the club would offer a refund on a legitimate promotion.
The club’s director and company secretary, Ashley Carson soon issued an apology and promised a “full review of communications and marketing procedures” and promised that disciplinary action “will be taken”. He said in a statement that he had discovered that the winning entry was not legitimate but that the club has a zero tolerance approach to such misleading activities.
Chesterfield is a club that has already been hit by major scandals this year and can ill afford to have its reputation tarnished even further by flouting the ASA’s rules about winner selection, something that could have easily been avoided.
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