The Spanish Lottery Means a Big Christmas for Lucky Winners!
The Spanish Christmas Lottery, or Sorteo Extraordinario de Navidad, is a national lottery game in Spain that has been played for 200 years....every year since 1812, to be exact.
This lottery game was first called the “Christmas” Lottery in 1892. It is widely considered to be the largest lottery worldwide and this year, if all of the tickets are sold, it will have an enormous payout of €2.5 billion, which is 70% of all ticket sales.
Those are certainly some good odds, so the Spanish Christmas Lottery offers players a high chance of winning a prize!
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About El Gordo
El Gordo, which means 'The Fat One” or “The Big One” is the first drawing of the Spanish Christmas Lottery, and, as you may have guessed from its name---is the one with the biggest jackpot.
EL Gordo is drawn every year on December 22, and the drawing is a long, drawn out affair; often keeping listeners sitting with an ear glued to their radios for as much as 3 and a half hours to find out if they are holding lucky number tickets. Since there are so very many winners, the wait is undoubtedly worthwhile for many players.
Here is how El Gordo works:
Ticket play numbers range from 00,000 to 84,999. There are 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes, as well as more than 1,000 lesser prizes. Players may also win prizes for even partially matching the top three winning numbers. There are two huge spheres, one sphere holds wooden balls, each with a 5 digit number. The other sphere holds balls that show the prize amounts.
The drawing proceeds this way:
• 1 ball for the first prize, called el Gordo.
• 1 ball for the second prize.
• 1 ball for the third prize.
• 2 balls for the fourth prizes.
• 8 balls for the fifth prizes.
• 1794 balls for the small prizes, called la Pedrea, which means "the pebble avalanche" or "stoning".
The next drawing in the Spanish Lottery is Loteria del Niño.
Loteria del Niño
Loteria del Niño takes place on January 5th each year. It requires new tickets, as you can't use your tickets from El Gordo.
This years prize pool for Loteria del Niño totals €840 million, with odds that start at 1:3. Again---very good odds of winning a prize in this segment of El Gordo!
Tickets for El Gordo
Because the price of El Gordo tickets is quite a lot---€200 each, the tickets are often sold as tenths, or decimos. The cost of a decimo is a modest €20 and when you stop and think about how high the chances of winning; the price seems reasonable indeed.
Unlike many lotteries, you do not have to be a resident of Spain to buy tickets for the Spanish Christmas Lottery.
There are several ways to purchase tickets, and as the tickets go on sale in the summer preceding the draw, one has ample time to get tickets for a chance at this magnificent lottery!
You can purchase tickets for the Spanish Lottery online and it isn't too late, so get yours now.
Good luck!