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El Gordo, the World's Largest Lottery !
El Gordo, the World’s Largest Lottery !
The Spanish El Gordo (‘the Fat One’ or ‘the big one’) lottery has been around for a long time. The first El Gordo drawing took place in 1812 and ever since the Christmas drawing has generated excitement throughout Europe. The annual Christmas draw has jackpots totaling 3 billion Euros. ($3,969,467,877 USD) making it the richest lottery on the planet. The El Gordo lottery makes more millionaires in a single draw than most lotteries make in a year. The drawings have a long and rich tradition in Spain and have changed very little since the first drawing in 1812. The drawings are held in Madrid and students from the San Ildefonso School (the school was once restricted to orphans and the children of civil servants) draw the lottery numbers and then sing the results.
Two spherical containers are used for the drawings and the larger of the two containers is filled with tens of thousands of balls with unique five digit numbers and the smaller container is 1,787 wooden balls with prizes in Euros on each ball. One child sings the number while another sings the prize. Because of the large number of prizes the drawing takes about three hours. The drawings are televised and generate a lot of excitement in Spain. All prizes are paid in a lump sum and are tax free unlike American lotteries where taxes can easily take over half of a large jackpot. In addition to the Christmas drawing other drawings take place throughout the year.
El Gordo tickets have two grids, one grid with numbers from 1 through 54 and a second grid containing numbers from 1 through 9. Players must select five numbers in the first grid and one in the second. El Gordo lottery tickets are sold throughout Spain and cost (euro)1.50. (About $1.98 USD) Future El Gordo draws this year will take place in September, October, November and of course Christmas. Players who want to purchase El Gordo tickets may purchase online lottery tickets for these exciting draws. Players need not be Spanish nationals to play and details are readily available at the official El Gordo website. El Gordo lottery results are available online and are posted in several languages including English.
It is easy to see why El Gordo is one of the most popular and played lotteries in the world. The odds of winning a prize in the El Gordo lottery are probably better than in any other major lottery. American lottery players should have no trouble purchasing tickets for this popular and profitable lottery.
El Gordo – Why Play This Spanish Lottery With Its Huge Payouts?
If you are new to the Elgordo lottery, let me highlight just how important this lotto is to a large percentage of Spaniards. The El Gordo lottery has been a national obsession in Spain since way back in December 1812 with massive appeal generated by the Christmas draw every year. In fact, 98% of the population play this Spanish National lottery every Christmas.
There are a number of major reasons why so many Spanish nationals partake 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 odds of collecting a cash prize in the Christmas draw are a highly achievable 1 in 6.
With the amount of interest that is paid to the Christmas El Gordo lottery draw, lots of individuals are not even aware that there are five more El Gordo draws each year as well. These take place in January, March, May, July and November. Although these 5 draws do not enjoy the incredible prize fund of the Christmas game, they are considerable nonetheless, ranging from 78 million Euros to 655 million Euros. Furthermore, these games offer almost 3 times as many prizes as the Christmas draw and odds of collecting a cash prize of an incredible 1 in 3.
The Spanish Christmas Lottery works differently to the majority of other worldwide lotteries. A whole ticket ‘billete’ is very pricey, costing 200 Euros. However, these tickets are split up into ten ‘decimos’ (tenths) costing 20 Euros each. When purchasing your tickets you have the option of purchasing one decimo, a complete ticket, or a portion of a ticket. If you do not purchase the whole ticket, someone else will purchase the remainder of your ticket. For example, if you purchase two decimos, someone else buys three and another buys five decimos and your ticket scoops 1000 Euros, then you will secure 200 Euros, 300 Euros and 500 Euros respectively. Due to the price tag of buying an entire ticket, it is typical for families and friends to pool their lottery funds and each person purchase a single ‘decimo’ (tenth).