Thanks to a strange prize structure, a man won $500,000 on the Australian game show “Millionaire Hot Seat,” a spinoff of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”, for answering an incredibly easy question.
The gigantic prize is the result of the show's competition with another Australian game show called “Million Dollar Minute.” According to BuzzerBlog, an outstanding game show news resource, the reason the prize was so high has to do with a building jackpot:
“'Million Dollar Minute' had a contestant win $500,000 today and turn it down for the chance at $750K tomorrow. “Millionaire Hot Seat,” in retaliation, did a Jackpot week last week where the final amount played for, win or lose, gets added to the Jackpot. So today this question usually worth $20,000 was worth $520,000. It's probably the easiest $500,000 I've ever seen. Slightly desperate.
Imagine getting on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” and winning a jackpot because you could identify an album that would be worth $200 on an average episode of “Jeopardy!” Desperate, indeed.