How The Spanish El Gordo Lottery Works

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The El Gordo (The Fat One) Christmas lottery is the most long-established lottery game in Spain with the vast percentage of the country’s inhabitants partaking. Believe it or not, this draw has become a national diversion with 98% of Spain’s population taking part. This is not really remarkable when you find out that the El Gordo is the largest prize fund lottery game worldwide.

The average Spaniard spends around €73 in the Christmas draw and in 2008 the prize fund is estimated to exceed a massive €2.20 billion. Here are a number of important features of the El Gordo lottery:

· More than 13,000 prizes are paid out.
· It is operated by the Spanish Government.
· There is an excellent 1 in 6 likelihood of scooping a cash prize.
· All prizes are paid out immediately and are tax exempt for Spain's residents.
· 70% of the revenue generated by ticket sales are paid out in cash prizes.

Since December 1812 this Spanish lottery game has followed exactly the same procedure every year. Two huge circular vessels are used; one of them contains tens of thousands of small wooden balls representing all ticket numbers; the other one contains a smaller number of wooden balls representing the prizes to be drawn. In the Lotería Nacional hall in Madrid, pupils of the San Ildefonso School (previously reserved for orphans of public servants) draw the numbers and corresponding prizes, singing the results aloud to the considerable on looking crowd while Spanish national TV and radio stations air the event.

Due to the sheer quantity of numbers and prizes, this process takes roughly three hours. In recent years, in excess of 4,800 individual numbers have won at least €1,000 per billete (€100 per décimo) in the Christmas draw. Those who do not win often make the typical comment that "it's health that really matters". Players who just win their entry fee back will frequently re-invest the prize in a ticket for El Niño, the second most significant draw, which takes place on the 6th of January each year.

The two container system is the long-established procedure of drawing the numbers in Spanish lotteries but this method is now set aside only for the celebrated Christmas lottery draw. The rest of the weekly and 5 other yearly El Gordo draws use five vessels with 10 balls in each, from where the winning numbers are pulled out.

Lotto shops in Spain mostly only sell tickets for one or two numbers, so the winners of the biggest prizes frequently live in the same town or neighbourhood or work for the same corporation. In 2005, the winning number was sold in the town of Vic in Catalonia (population 37,825), whose inhabitants shared approximately €500 million.

Traditionally, you could only participate in the El Gordo lottery if you were a Spanish citizen. However, with the introduction of lottery ticket sales agents you are now able to take part in this world famous Spanish national lottery regardless of where you live globally. Some international El Gordo syndicates have also been established to not only allow more people access to this lotto but to enhance their chances of collecting cash prizes too.