Every year many lottery prizes go unclaimed when the jackpot reaches a certain level. Though some lottery prizes may go unclaimed for a number of reasons, there is no excuse for most of the unclaimed lottery prizes.

Camelot, the UK lottery draw organisers, Unibet and Euro millions all have unclaimed prizes before the end of the draw. Euro millions in Spain rounds off each week with unclaimed prizes of about £30 million each week. Camelot explain that each week about £3000 goes unclaimed and added to the prize fund. This doesn't seem to deter people as they keep on playing hoping that their numbers will be drawn.

Lotto Extra, have about 15% of the unclaimed prize fund and are running a scheme from 1 April 2011, whereby each prize will have their qualifying numbers drawn each week. Camelot explain that although this may sound like just good news, the scheme isn't really designed to make people buy more tickets. Rather, they are hoping that people will now go out and claim the prizes.

Unibet have also run many promotions in recent times, such as a promo during the football Euro 2008. They have offered various prizes, including holiday packages, art collection and a brand new car. Each week during the football tournament about £20,000 goes unclaimed, altogether more than £100,000 has been given out so far.

The highlight for me personally was the launch of beans. These squares could be played for free every Friday, and a user would mark off the squares by getting them off the bottom of their card. I managed to do it on one occasion where I got four in my card, and I was only £1 down the weeks so I shared my winnings with the person on the next table.

Being able to share something of this scale with your friends and family is definitely something which will highlight the difference between being a regular lottery player and a casual visitor.

Overall the iSlots games appear to be a promising platform for the organisers, as they have the potential to reach millions of people. The only downside is that unlike the other games, the prizes aren't all that high. However, as they are for charity, the concern isn't necessarily that people will receive prizes that will actually help them, but that they will receive flimsy ones that are likely to fall into disuse rather than use.

The iSlots games appear to be going to prove extremely popular trends as they are likely to be integrated into the other games running at the site. It will be interesting to see how this turns out, as it is likely to impact the whole site, not just the fruit machines.

The view exposed in this article has been taken from my own personal blogs, and while I do love the concept of being able to get something for nothing, and the thought of being able to have an instant win when playing the fruit machines, it does begs the question of whether this is actually a strategy worth pursuing.

Typically the only people cashing in on these sorts of promotions are the very high rollers. These are the people who are likely to end up with the prizes, so it prudently wouldn't be a wise motive to promote the iSlots, unless there were good reasons to do so.

Prior to the promotion being live, there would always be considerable publicity, and the possibility of beingaranteed a prize. Naturally this aroused suspicion, and a variety of rumours would appear, ranging from the fact that they were suspended, to the fact that they were actually going to be so popular that the site would go broke.

The promotion was so huge however that the site would come under heavy criticism for not quite living up to the expectations, and at the end of day it was revealed to be a clever tactic, that had been developed by a PR company, prior to the original promotion.

Now that is a great feeling! Next article i will talk about the results of that £1.2 million jackpot, and how the iSlots games were the winners.