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elGordo The Spanish Lottery
Facts about elGordo The Spanish Lottery.
The largest Spanish lottery organisation, ONLAE, provides the national “El Gordo” (also known as Navidad) lottery. This is known to be the only lottery in the World with more than US$1 billion in prizes. ElGordo The Spanish Lottery has a minimum lottery jackpot of 5 million Euros. Thus, it is rightly referred to as The Fat One. The draw takes place on Sunday; and there are six major draws that take place during a year. These draws are held in January, March, May, July, November and December. This lottery awards prizes worth US$4 billion annually. The Christmas draw is held on December 22 every year. The July 2007 El Gordo draw is worth over US$168 million. 37,814 cash prizes will be given out and the first prize is worth US$ 24 million. This draw provides the best chances of winning; every 1 person in 3 has a chance of taking some prize money home. In order to win the lottery amount, the players have to match all five numbers from the ticket numbers. To win the first, second and third prize, match all the numbers on their respective ticket numbers. El Gordo lottery can be played in a number of ways – official lottery office, bars in Spain, as well as on the Internet. A large segment of the Spanish population participates in elGordo The Spanish Lottery. The results are announced on TV and are also run on the next day’s newspaper. With so many years of El Gordo into practice, it has now become a tradition to collect old lottery tickets. Some families pass on the same numbers from generation to generation. Ticket numbers from the first draw are known to win several thousands of dollars. ElGordo The Spanish Lottery is known to have a history of scams and frauds. At several instances, players have been approached by fictional characters who ask the consumers to fill out forms and transfer some fees in order to receive the prize amount. They use different names and explanations but the basic operation is the same. Euro Millions is another lottery that was an initiative of three nations - Spain, France and the United Kingdom. Shortly, it was joined by six other countries – Austria, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The lottery draw takes place in France on every Friday and a typical jackpot is around £10 million.
The chances of winning the Euro Millions jackpot are 1 in 70 million and of winning anything is 1 in 24. The lottery works in such a way that if no one match all the numbers in a week, the jackpot gets rolled over to the next week. These rollovers continue and if no one has matched the numbers by the 11th week, the cumulative jackpot is shared between those who got close to winning. El Nino is another Spanish lottery which has achieved fame but not as close as El Gordo. El Nino is on a much smaller scale. ElGordo The Spanish Lottery, also the world’s richest lottery, started in 1812; however, it merged into an official system in 1892 with the start of the Spain’s holiday season and it was given the name of “Christmas Lottery.” At its inception, the draw was held on Mondays. Being one of the oldest and the biggest, the lottery is a passion among Spaniards.
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