Chuck E. Cheese seeks to destroy 7 billion prize tickets

CEC Entertainment, owners of Chuck E. Cheese, who filed for bankruptcy in June have 7 billion paper prize tickets they need to destroy, according to a bankruptcy filing in a Texas court this week. That's apparently enough tickets to fill more than 60 of those 40-foot cargo shipping containers. From Restaurant Business:

CEC Entertainment has reached agreements with three of its suppliers to pay for and destroy the unwanted tickets for about $2.3 million, according to the filing. That's about $1 million less than the cost of circulating them. If the 7 billion tickets made their way into the pizza-stained hands of game-playing children, they could be redeemed for approximately $9 million in prizes.

"Since Prize Tickets are redeemable by guests at significantly higher value than the cost of Prize Tickets, the Debtors believe it is in the best interests of the estates to mitigate any risk of these tickets being circulated to the general public," CEC Entertainment's attorneys wrote in the document.

image: detail of photo by Jason Baker via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)