Spanish Lottery Syndicate Reviews
Spain is probably best known for it's crazy once a year Christmas draw, commonly referred to as 'El Gordo' - a great game for a syndicate group. But there's a lot more to the Spanish lottery.
Read our Spanish syndicate reviews here, or below for more details about the games themselves:-
The Reviews
| Rating | Click For Review | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish Lottery Syndicates | ||
stars |
The Lotter El Gordo Tickets | Not a syndicate option this one, but amongst the best value online for buying real El Gordo tickets. From a well trusted site that's been around since 2002. |
stars |
LottoLand El Gordo | Also not a syndicate but great value for money for those that prefer a 'bet on the results' option rather than the more expensive ticket option. Another well known and trusted brand that's been operating for over 4 years now. |
stars |
Lotto 247 | Tickets for the regular El Gordo and La Primitiva draws. Plus of course the crazy Christmas special raffle. |
stars |
Play Huge Lottos | Popular ticket courier service for all the big lottery games. Covers the Spanish La Primitiva and El Gordo games. And the big Christmas one too. |
stars |
El Gordo de Navidad Syndicate | Insane Spanish Christmas El Gordo draw. Massive prize fund, huge number of prizes. Plain crazy and I love it. |
stars |
Big Fat Lotteries | Syndicate groups for UK Lotto, EuroMillions and Spanish Superdraws. Starting at £5 per week. |
Want to list your lottery syndicate? Submit your Spanish syndicate for review.
The regular Spanish Lottery game is called La Primitiva. It's a twice weekly 6 from 49 game, similar to many countries national lotteries. Prizes tend to be around the 9 million Euros level.
There are other games too: the Bonoloto which is a 6/49 game four times a week, and 'El Gordo de La Primitiva' which is a 5/54 plus bonus ball game drawn on Sunday (oh, and not to be confused with the Christmas 'El Gordo').
Christmas El Gordo (El Gordo de Navidad)
Most people know Spain for 'El Gordo'. This draw is a national obsession - incredibly about 98% of the population of Spain play in the El Gordo Christmas lottery! It's simply become a Spanish tradition to play. Numbers are even reserved and passed down the generations. Spanish people even collect old tickets.
Part of the reason so many play, and the reason for it being one of the most famous lotteries in the world is due to the massive prize fund. Normally this is well over a billion Euros, with hundreds of jackpot prizes of millions of Euros. And you do have around 1-in-3 chance of picking up a prize as there are so many smaller prizes paid out, tens of thousands of them!
El Gordo tickets are a bit confusing though. You don't pick numbers in the traditional way, instead you buy ready printed tickets with numbers already on them. There are also multiple tickets with the same number (confused yet!).
And the total amount of numbers available has been known to change - there were 85,000 different numbers in the Christmas 2006 draw, but there are currently 99,999.
And yes, that does mean 99,999 little wooden balls are actually placed in a huge draw machine. With thousands of them slowly drawn one by one! There is even a second machine where more balls are drawn to determine the prizes won!
Each ticket number is available in 10 'series' - that is, 10 lots of the same ticket number. El Gordo tickets are roughly the size of a sheet of paper, but are then split into 10 smaller tickets called 'decimas'. You are allowed to buy either the whole ticket of 10 decimas, or you can buy just part of the ticket.
The prize you win depends on how many decimas you bought. So if you only bought 5, you win half the ticket prize. But what this means is you would need to buy 100 decimas to hold the entire ticket number outright. At 20 Euros for a decima this is not cheap. So it's very common for families and friends, even entire Spanish villages to pool their lottery money together, even just to buy a single decima.
It's also common to spread your purchase by buying a single decima across multiple different lottery ticket numbers (better chances of winning in exchange for a smaller piece of the prize).
You can read more about the Spanish lottery 'El Gordo' here.
El Gordo Every Month!
The El Gordo draw used to be just 22 December every year. A Summer draw (14th July) was introduced in 2000, with additional draws since now giving a special draw every month of the year. The prizes are still enormous (typically around 80 millions Euros) but the tradition surrounding the Christmas draw ensures it remains the most popular of all.
Closed Syndicates (for reference only):
| Rating | Click For Review | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Closed Spanish Syndicates | ||
stars |
Spanish Lottery Monthly Special Draws | Best value online for playing El Gordo, El Nino, El Gordo Summer and all the other monthly special lottery draws. |
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El Gordo Lottery Syndicate | Decent value El Gordo Christmas 2008 lottery syndicate, playing the lottery with the BILLION Euro prize pool! |
