MADRID (AP) – People lucky enough to hold tickets with the number 71198 were blessed with hundreds of thousands of euros in prize money in Spain’s bumper Christmas lottery Friday.
Children from Madrid’s San Ildefonso school called out the top prize number three hours after the much-followed, nationally televised draw began around 9 a.m. (0800 GMT) at Madrid’s Teatro Real opera house.
The lottery, known as El Gordo, or The Fat One, will dish out 2.4 billion euros ($2.8 billion) in prizes this year.
Other lotteries have bigger individual top prizes but El Gordo, held each Dec. 22, is ranked as the world’s richest for the total prize-money involved.
The top prize per winning ticket is 400,000 euros but there are many smaller prizes too.