After last week’s announcement that Dream Island, the locally based gaming platform with a huge variety of online and app-based games, had introduced an additional cash prize to its popular Lucky Day draw on the occasion of its first anniversary, excitement reached fever pitch on Friday night as eligible participants eagerly awaited the results.
The newly announced Lucky Raffle — which is the second draw in the showstopper, Lucky Day — with a fixed prize of Dh10,000 was going to be awarded at random to one of the registered users of the platform who had entered any of the site-wide contests in the 14 days preceding the draw, at a cost of between Dh1 and Dh50.
As the Lucky Raffle started, participants' phone numbers (only the first and last five digits for security reasons) scrolled randomly across screens throughout the region. Then, the phone number of the fixed draw’s winner was revealed. The Dream Island team contacted the winner directly after the show, who confirmed that the cash award of Dh10,000 had already been transferred to her Dream Island account.
The winner, Evelyn Lee Mondragon, opens her ToTok App to check her feed and make calls on a daily basis, and that’s when she decided to give it a shot and try her luck. She started playing the virtual Scratch Card game, Hulm, and ended up winning Dh350, which she divided between playing other games on the platform after transferring some of it into her bank account. Then she decided to switch to Dream Five and played a few rounds without expecting that she would be the lucky one and win a huge amount of money on Lucky Raffle, which she really needed. “It must be a blessing, being able to win this cash prize when my father is in the hospital and needs medical assistance,” said Evelyn. “Now I will be able to help him and send him money to continue his therapy.”
Evelyn is from the Philippines and has been living in the UAE with her husband for almost three years. She has four children who are based in her hometown with relatives. “I will also be able to send some money to my children for Christmas and save the rest! I’m really grateful for this.”
Our winner’s goal is to be able to buy a house in the Philippines where she can live happily with her husband and children.
Speaking after the prize was awarded, a Dream Island spokesperson said, “It is a distinct pleasure to be able to completely change somebody’s life for the better. We wanted to give our users the most enjoyable experience on the Dream Island platform, so we introduced a second draw to Lucky Day called Lucky Raffle as a way of thanking all our users for their trust and support because every user placing an order to play any game was automatically enrolled in the second draw. For Ms. Mondragon, this really was a lucky day.”
Dream Island saw an additional lucky winner this week who won the third prize in Lucky Day and won Dh10,000. A. Venkatesh is a 56-year-old shipping company worker who has lived in the UAE for 36 years. The Indian national read about the platform in the local press and was interested in playing Dream Five and Lucky Day since first registering. “These are my favourite two games and I usually select numbers randomly, which worked out well for me this time,” Venkatesh said.
About his winning in the Lucky Day draw last Friday, he added, “It feels great! Thank you so much! It was really unexpected; I will use this money for my son’s education.”
The Dream Island team asked him if he would play more after winning the third prize of Lucky Day, to which he answered, “Definitely yes! This is only the beginning of the Dh10 million journey!”
Launched in 2020, Dream Island offers a large variety of games to play from Dh1 to Dh50. Rules for the prizes vary for each game, as do the cash prizes, ranging from Dh1 to Dh10 million. The games are designed to appeal to all tastes and include social and sports-related themes such as Scratch ’n’ Win, Predict-a-Colour, Lucky League and Derby Champion, all the way up to the Lucky Day lottery. Drawn twice a month, this game asks users to choose five numbers between 1 and 31 (the days of the month), and one bonus number from between 1 and 12 (the months in a year). Matching 6 out of 6 numbers puts winners in with a chance to take home the amazing Dh10m prize!
Dream Island players are highly active on social media and regularly discuss the games played and prizes won, and as expected, there was a lot of online buzz about the win, with users looking forward to the next Lucky Day draw in just under a fortnight.
Dream Island’s policy is to help people realise their dreams while giving back to society by donating a portion of lottery revenues to communities in need. Over the past 12 months it has achieved this and so much more with thousands of prize-winners all over the world. The games are restricted to over-18s only, and terms and conditions apply.
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