Play the Lottery? Look At The Spanish Lottery

In December 2008 e-Lottery added the El Gordo to its syndicate system offering participants worldwide a vastly improved prospect of sharing in this enormous Spanish lottery prize fund.

If this is the first time you have come across the Elgordo lottery, allow me to highlight just how big a deal this lottery is to the vast majority of the Spanish population. The El Gordo lottery has been a national obsession in Spain for a long time with massive appeal generated by the Christmas draw every year. The excitement is such that, 98% of the population play this Spanish National lottery every Christmas.

There are a few fundamental reasons why so many Spanish nationals join in the Christmas El Gordo draw. Firstly, there is the incentive of the largest lottery prize fund of any worldwide lottery game - 2.20 Billion Euros! Secondly, there are in excess of 13,000 cash prizes to be won. Finally, the probability of collecting a cash prize in the Christmas draw are a highly achievable 1 in 6.

With the level of interest that is given to the Christmas El Gordo lottery draw, lots of people are unaware that there are five more El Gordo draws every year also. These take place in January, March, May, July and November. While these 5 games don’t boast the massive prize fund of the Christmas game, they are substantial nonetheless, ranging from 78 million Euros to 655 million Euros. In addition, these draws present nearly three times as many prizes as the Christmas draw and odds of scooping a cash prize of an amazing 1 in 3.

The Spanish Christmas Lottery operates differently to the majority of other lotteries in the world. A complete ticket ‘billete’ is very expensive, costing 200 Euros. However, these tickets are divided up into ten ‘decimos’ (tenths) costing 20 Euros each. When acquiring your tickets you have the choice of purchasing one decimo, a complete ticket, or a portion of a ticket. If you don’t purchase the entire ticket, somebody else will purchase the rest of your ticket. For example, if you buy two decimos, someone else buys three decimos and another buys five decimos and your ticket scoops 1000 Euros, then you will secure 200 Euros, 300 Euros and 500 Euros in that order. Owing to the price tag of buying an entire ticket, it is very common for families and friends to pool their lottery funds and each individual buy a single ‘decimo’ (tenth).