El Gordo Lottery Work Of Art

El Gordo Lottery Work Of Art

By:


The El Gordo (The Fat One) Christmas lotto is the most traditional lottery draw in Spain with the large percentage of the countrys population participating. As it happens, this draw has grown to be a national activity with 98% of Spains citizens taking part. This is not really unexpected when you consider that the El Gordo is the biggest prize fund lottery game worldwide.

The average Spaniard spends approximately 73 in the Christmas draw and in 2008 the prize fund is projected to surpass a staggering 2.20 billion. Here are a number of key features of the El Gordo lottery:

In excess of 13,000 prizes are paid out.
It is operated by the Spanish Government.
There is an outstanding 1 in 6 likelihood of grabbing a cash prize.
All prizes are paid out straight away and are free of tax for Spanish residents.
70% of total ticket sales are paid out in cash prizes.

Since December 1812 the Christmas lottery has followed exactly the same procedure every year. Two large sphere-shaped containers are used; one of them contains tens of thousands of small wooden balls representing all ticket numbers; the other one contains fewer wooden balls representing the prizes to be drawn. In the Lotera Nacional hall in Madrid, students of the San Ildefonso School (previously reserved for orphans of public servants) draw the numbers and corresponding prizes, singing the results aloud to the huge Madrid crowd while both Spanish national television and radio broadcast the event.

Due to the considerable amount of numbers and prizes, this process takes about 3 hours to complete. In recent years, in excess of 4,800 individual numbers have collected at least 1,000 per billete (100 per dcimo) in the Christmas draw. Those who do not win time and again make the typical comment that "it's health that really matters". Participants who just win their entry fee back will frequently re-invest the prize in a ticket for El Nio, the second most influential draw, held on January the 6th every year.

The two container arrangement is the traditional procedure of drawing the numbers in Spanish lotteries but this method is now kept solely for the famous Christmas 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 picked.

Lottery outlets in Spain typically only sell tickets for one or two numbers, so the winners of the major prizes frequently live in the same town or neighbourhood 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 shared approximately 500 million.

Historically, you could only participate in the El Gordo if you were a Spanish citizen. However, with the introduction of lottery ticket sales agents you now have the opportunity to partake in this world famous Spanish lottery regardless of where you live globally. Some global El Gordo syndicates have also been introduced to not only allow more people access to this lottery but to improve their probability of winning cash prizes as well.

About the Author:
Johnny Sorrento is an affiliate with the global e-Lottery syndicate system.
Check out the international eLottery business today. Earn great commissions promoting the UK Lottery, Euro Millions and Spanish National lottery syndicates worldwide.



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


Tags:

|

Loading...
Related....
Videos...

Recent Arts-and-Entertainment Articles

Comments

Still can't find what you are looking for? Search for it!

Loading

Site Navigation:

Copyright 2005-2011 ArticleSnatch, LLC - All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy | Terms of Service.