Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Contestant Loses £100k After World Cup Question
A contestant on popular quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire brutally missed out on £108,000 after a tough World Cup question.
Football fans often like to brag that they know almost everything there is to know about the beautiful game, be it the lineups of a game several decades ago or the names of every single Ballon d'Or winner.
However, it's not often that fans get the opportunity to show just how much they know and win a serious amount of money while doing it.
But for one contestant on Germany's edition of the popular quiz series Who Wants to be a Millionaire, hosted in the UK by Jeremy Clarkson, he had exactly this chance when faced with a question about the FIFA World Cup.
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Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be for the contestant, as he missed out on a huge £108,000 due to a football question that proved to be just too difficult.
During an episode of the popular quiz show in Germany, Marc Offenbacher had expertly worked his way through 12 of the 15 questions needed to take home the stunning prize of €1million (£871,775).
With two of his four lifelines left, it was looking promising for the contestant, until host Gunther Jauch read out the next question, leaving him stumped.
“What is the most common final score in men’s FIFA World Cup finals? 1–0? 2–1? 3–1? Or 4–2?” Jauch asked.
Once he head the question, Offenbacher was clearly not happy, admitting that he wasn't much of a football fan, or a fan of any sport for that matter.
"I’m more of an outdoors person,” he admitted.
“I never watch football. Not even other sports.”
Despite not being confident he knew the answer, Offenbacher decided to push on and use on of his remaining lifelines, one that isn't available to contestants in the UK version of the show.
The lifeline allowed Offenbacher to ask one member of the audience to stand up if they think they knew the answer and while initially there were no takers, eventually one man stood up after admitting he used to play football and watch a lot of it.
He said: “I can’t name all the World Cup final results off the top of my head, but I’ve heard that statistically, most football matches end 2–1. So I’d assume it’s the same for the World Cup finals.”
After some consultation between the two, they confidently ruled out 4-2 as a potential answer, suggesting that it was far too high a scoreline to be the average.
Therefore, when Offenbacher used his 50:50 lifelife and was left with 2-1 and 4-2 as his remaining answers, he was confident that he was about to win €125,000 (£108,000).
Unfortunately, it all came crashing down for the contestant as Jauch revealed that it was in fact 4-2 that was the most common scoreline, having happened in four different World Cup finals.
Of course, perhaps the most famous of these finals was England's victory over West Germany back in 1966, as a hat-trick from Geoff Hurst and a goal from Martin Peters secured the 4-2 win for England after extra-time.
Brutally, Offenbacher had not set a fallback amount earlier in the game, meaning the wrong answer saw his final prize fall down to just €500 (£435), €64,500 (£56,207) less than if he decided not to answer the question and €124,500 (£108,493) less than if he’d got it right.
Topics: Football, Germany, FIFA World Cup
Ben McCrum