The Unique El Gordo Christmas Lottery Draw
The El Gordo (The Fat One) Christmas lottery is the most time-honoured lotto draw in Spain with the large percentage of the country’s inhabitants taking part. In fact, this draw has become a national pastime with 98% of Spain’s inhabitants taking part. This is not really unexpected when you find out that the El Gordo is the largest prize fund lottery game globally.
The typical Spanish resident spends roughly €73 in the Christmas draw and in 2008 the prize fund is estimated to top a staggering €2.20 billion. Here are a number of major 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 chance of grabbing a cash prize.
· All prizes are paid out at once and are tax exempt for Spain’s residents.
· 70% of the revenue generated by ticket sales are paid out in cash prizes.
Since way back in December 1812 the Christmas lottery has operated in precisely the same manner year on year. Two huge sphere-shaped vessels are used; one of them contains tens of thousands of small wooden balls representing all ticket numbers; the other one contains a smaller amount of wooden balls representing the prizes to be drawn. In the Lotería Nacional hall in Madrid, students of the San Ildefonso School (formerly reserved for orphans of public servants) draw the numbers and corresponding prizes, singing the results audibly in front of the public while Spanish radio and television stations transmit the occasion.
Owing to the considerable amount of numbers and prizes, this procedure takes about 3 hours to complete. In recent years, over 4,800 individual numbers have collected no less than €1,000 per billete (€100 per décimo) in the Christmas draw. Those individuals who are not fortunate enough to win a cash prize frequently come out with the predictable comment that “it’s health that really matters”. Participants who only get their money back will frequently re-invest the prize in a ticket for El Niño, the second most influential draw, held on the 6th of January each year.
The two container routine is the time-honoured way 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 operate using five vessels with 10 balls in each, from where the winning numbers are selected.
Lottery retailers in Spain mostly only sell tickets for one or two numbers, so the winners of the biggest prizes frequently reside in the same town or district or work for the same company. In 2005, the winning number was sold in the town of Vic in Catalonia (population 37,825), whose inhabitants scooped in the region of €500 million.
For many years, you could only take part in the El Gordo lottery if you were a Spanish citizen. However, with the introduction of lottery ticket sales agents you now have the chance to take part in this internationally renowned Spanish national lottery regardless of where you reside in the world. Some worldwide El Gordo syndicates have also been established to not only allow more people access to this lotto but to boost their odds of winning cash prizes as well.