About La Primitiva

Sure, when you say Spanish lottery, most people will say El Gordo. But, the big Christmas draw is not everything Spain has to offer when it comes to games of chance. There are many games under the Spanish lottery, but other than El Gordo, there is one more that stands out, and it’s called La Primitiva.

La Primitiva, meaning “the original one”, is called that for a reason. Its first draw took place way back in 1763 (although under a different name at the time), which makes it the oldest lottery in the world. So you can easily assume how good and popular the game is if it managed to stay around for so long.

Its original form, the way we play it today, was established in 1985, after a 150 year hiatus, but the original date shows that Spanish people know how to do lottery.

How to Play

And luckily, we can all play it today. To enter the game, you are choosing six numbers out of 49, which all have to be matched to win a jackpot. But, something unique to the Spanish lottery are two additional balls, called Complementario and Reintegro (from the additional 0-9).

The first one, Complementario, raises the win for those who’ve guessed the first five numbers right, while Reintegro plays a special part in regaining your money back (1 Euro, which is how much one line of play costs) if you fail to match any other numbers and match only Reintegro OR increases the prize for jackpot winners (so six numbers matched plus Reintegro means an even bigger jackpot).

Besides the original game, there is also a Joker option which adds a seven-digit number to your ticket and makes you eligible for winning 1 million Euros if you match all seven numbers all for just one Euro extra. There are also other prizes eligible in the Joker game, for matching six numbers or less.

Chances of Winning

So, to summarize, there are in total seven tiers of prizes: 6 + Reintegro, 6, 5 + Complementario, 5, 4, 3 and 0 + Reintegro. The odds for winning the special jackpot (6 + Reintegro) are 1 in 139.838.160, but the odds for winning a regular jackpot (matching six regular numbers) are 1:13.983.816. The odds for winning the return for your bought ticket are 1 in 10.

When is the Draw

La Primitiva jackpot starts at 3 million Euros, but has no cap and no roll-downs, which means it can get pretty big in a short amount of time since the draw takes place twice a week, every Thursday and Saturday.

As a proof of that stands a record breaking La Primitiva jackpot won in 2015: the crazy amount of 101.7 million Euros.

It seems as though those Spaniards really know how to do lottery, and now you can join them by clicking on one of the two buttons below where you can buy the ticket or bet on the outcome today! Let’s play!