The El Gordo lottery draw is one of the major Spanish lottery games. It is surprisingly popular in Spain where some of the ticket numbers are reserved and even passed down through the generations of families.

It’s a different game to other lotteries because there is only a limited supply of each possible number. Once those numbers have been sold nobody else can have them.

Spain is pretty much brought to a stand still for three hours as children from the Madrid San Ildefonso school take it in turns to sing the winning numbers and the amounts won.

The Big Spanish Christmas Lottery

It used to be just a single draw at Christmas each year. But el gordo expanded to include a Summer draw and now happens 6 times per year. But the Christmas draw remains by far the most exciting. Mainly because it attracts so many ticket sales that it can offer a prize pot of over two billion euros.

There Are Millions Of Prizes

It’s not just the prize pot that is big. The actual number of prize winners is unheard of – where else can you find a lottery draw that pays out millions of prizes. There are 390 jackpots of 1 million Euros or more just to start with. Then there are hundreds more prizes of hundreds of thousands of Euros.

It’s not hard to see why the el gordo spanish lottery is so popular. The number of prizes is enough to get anyone excited about playing.

How To Buy El Gordo Tickets?

People outside of Spain need to be careful as numerous online ticket sellers are happy to charge very high prices.

Tickets are sold either as full tickets or you can buy part of a ticket. This is somewhat different to all other lottery games most of us have ever heard of before. And can as a result be quite confusing. Each ticket is divided into 10 smaller parts. You can buy all 10 parts, or you can buy as many parts as you want.

Prices more than the normal ticket price are just fine as sellers do have extra costs to cover. But it is not ok to charge five times the real price. So please be careful.

If you’re unsure, one of the safest ways to play is to use a reliable syndicate. They will take care of all the ticket handling for you. You can find out more about the el gordo syndicate I use here. This also adds the benefit of giving you an even better chance of winning too.