Loteria del Niño or El Niño as it is commonly called is Spain’s popular New Year’s raffle. Following on the heels of the legendary Spanish Christmas Lottery, Loteria del Niño is the second-largest lottery in Spain – and one of the biggest in the world!
El Niño may mean “little one” or “child” in Spanish, but there’s nothing tiny about its prize pool offerings. In fact, the prize pool for 2018 is an amazing €700 million! Plus, with a better than 1 in 3 chance of winning, it’s no wonder than El Nino is one of the most anticipated lottery events of the year!
Loteria Del Niño: At A Glance
While there is so much to learn about El Niño, here are the most important facts to keep in mind about Spain’s beloved New Year’s tradition.
- El Niño is one of the world’s biggest one-day lottery event and is drawn on January 6
- The El Niño 2017 total prize pool is an incredible €700 Million
- Your chances of winning a prize are better than 1 in 3
- You have a 1 in 100,000 chance of winning the top prize worth €2 million!
- There are an incredible 37,920 prizes available per series
- 100,000 tickets are issued with numbers between 00,000 – 10,000.
- Each ticket is divided into 10 parts called decimas.
- Players can buy an entire ticket or as little as 1 decima for a portion of the winnings
Loteria Del Niño Format
As so many people take part in El Niño, the format is slightly more complicated than the regular lottery. In fact, it works more like a raffle. There are 10,000 tickets printed out each year, with numbers from 00,000 to 99,999.
El Niño has multiple ‘series’ of tickets, which means that each ticket is actually printed out 45 times.
While this means, up to 45 people might have the same ticket number, they will win prizes according to the ‘series’ their ticket belongs to.
So this means that El Niño has 45 top prizes worth €2 million each!
The last thing you need to know about Spain’s El Niño lottery is that each ticket is made up of 10 parts (called decimas). This means that players don’t need to buy the entire ticket. They can get shares of a ticket instead for a share of the winnings.
For instance, if you get 1 decima – which is 1/10th of a full ticket – you’ll receive 1/10th of the prize money if that ticket wins.
Loteria Del Niño 2018 Prize Table
Much like El Gordo, El Niño is not shy when it comes to giving away prizes. There are 37,920 prizes to win in each series – meaning there are over 1.7 million prizes handed out in total each year!
Loteria Del Niño History
Spain’s El Niño lottery is a nod to the holiday season. Loteria Del Nino translates to “the little boy” in Spain. It’s named after the ‘Adoration of the Magi’, when the three kings came to give gifts to baby Jesus (“el nino”).
First created in 1941, draws were held annually on Jan 5 until 2000 when they moved the draw ahead by a day. Now, the draw takes place on January 6 in Madrid every year.