Get ready for big lottery wins in December

All the fear about lottery aside, get ready for the big rumble this festive season.
LOTTO has upped the stakes, twice in one go. It has guaranteed the largest single cash prize ever paid out - a Sh100million raffle to be held on December 31.

At the same time, LOTTO also announced a Sh500 million special Christmas Super jackpot that will be effective for the month of December. This is not only the largest jackpot ever offered in Kenya but also the largest currently anywhere in Africa.
When it was licensed in November 2015, LOTTO’s mandate was to raise money for good causes.

Since its launch, there have been 100 millionaires and five multi-millionaires. Under the banner, ‘You Win, Kenya Wins’ it has raised over Sh180 million for good causes across the country.
LOTTO runs on the 6/49 format, one of the world most popular lottery formats, where 6 numbers plus a bonus number are drawn from a pool of 49.

LOTTO was launched with what was, at the time, a record-breaking jackpot of Sh100million. But, despite the volume of its winners and millionaires, no player to date has had the good fortune to pick the 6 plus bonus number that could win the top-tier Sh100 million jackpot.

Every time a player buys a LOTTO ticket between now and December 31 they get one corresponding free entry in the ‘must-win’ Sh100million New Year Super Powerdraw.

The record-breaking New Year Super Powerdraw will amount to the single largest jackpot ever to be paid to an individual Kenyan. The largest pay-out to an individual on record to date in the industry is a Sh25 million jackpot.

In tandem with the New Year guaranteed Sh100 million Super Powerdraw, LOTTO also announced the launch of the Christmas Superjackpot, which increases the current top-tier jackpot from Sh100 million by a factor of five to another record-breaking Sh500 million.

It is only matched by the National Lottery of South Africa, which peaks at around Rand 50million (Sh361million). Our mandate is not to harm but to help the community. So as we announce these record-breaking jackpots, we remain very sensitive to social concerns about the growth of problem-gaming in the country.

The majority of lotteries in the world are owned and operated by the State for the purpose of raising funds for various good causes in the community. All social impact studies across multiple markets have proven that lottery is a benign form of gambling.

Research carried out on behalf of the UK Gambling Commission demonstrated only 0.7 per cent of problem-gaming arises from lottery play. As such therefore, there is virtually no direct evidence to suggest that people who play lotteries are likely to become problem gamblers.

In Kenya, the average LOTTO player spends some Sh73 per month. An affordable sum by any measure to even the poorer sections of the community.
LOTTO’s deliberate policy is of discouraging multiple entries and excessive spending. LOTTO wants a lot of people playing a little rather than a few people playing a lot to avoid the risk inherent in their doing so.
Besides generating some exciting festive returns for its players, LOTTO also hopes that its record-breaking Christmas and New Year jackpots drive record contributions to the LOTTO Foundation.

The Sh180 million raised in just one year has been applied to the support of a wide range of education, health, sports development and other social development initiatives across the country.

The Foundation was one of the largest sponsors of Team Kenya on the Road to Rio and the Kenyan Youth Team to the Youth Commonwealth Games in Samoa. And there are many other noble contributions.

Most importantly, it is not LOTTO, but its players who are the effective contributors to the LOTTO Foundation’s good causes’ programmes.