Residents hope Internet service will provide winner

Staff Reporter
PEOPLE in the Balearic Islands are amongst those who have bought the largest number of tickets for the mammoth Christmas lottery draw using the Internet this year. Ventura24, a company which sells tickets through their website, confirms that the islands are high on the list, together with hopefuls from La Coruña, Málaga, Lérida, Sevilla, Ceuta and Melilla (North Africa) and Granada. It is the first time that punters in Spain have had the opportunity to buy tickets from anywhere in the country on the Internet. People who use this method, show a clear preference that the numbers that they select should end in a three and a 1. This trend does not tally with information provided by the State Lottery organisation who point out that the number “5” is the final figure which has come up most often in the El Gordo(literally, “the big fat one”) lottery draw in its 191 years of existence. In stark contrast, the number “1” as a final figure, has been selected on the fewest occasions.occasions, and in “4” and “6” on 26 occasions, respectively. According to the State Lottery organisation, the figure that has been drawn as the final number on the least occasions is “1”, followed by “2” and “9”. This year, the draw will share out prize money totalling 1'755.6 million euros, of which 380 million euros will be awarded under the El Gordo draw, a figure which gives the winner 10'000 euros for every euro spent on tickets. Ventura24 acts as a kind of “electronic club” and also this year as an intermediary between individual purchases and the lottery administration. A spokesman says that “0” and “6” are the least sought after numbers to date. Since 1812, the year when a Christmas lottery was first celebrated in Spain and when a ticket for the occasion cost no more than 1 peseta, the first prize for this draw, popularly known as El Gordo, has finished with the number “5” on 30 The special Christmas lottery, to be drawn tomorrow, is the most important and popular occasion of the year in terms of national betting. The State Lottery reveals that nationwide spending this year on the Christmas Lottery is an average of 61.91 euros for every citizen in the land.