One chance in 400 thousand: how lotteries work in Russia

The lottery in Russia is a state matter. Gone are the days when an attempt to draw out a lucky ticket was not called otherwise than a "scam". Since 2014, all lotteries in the country are owned by the state, and private lotteries are prohibited. The state guarantees the fairness of the draws and 100% payment of winnings. Two ministries - finance and sports - monitor the correctness of lotteries and payments. In total, the lottery brings 15 billion rubles to the country's budget.

Lottery tickets are distributed under the Stoloto brand for 7 all-Russian drawing and 10 non-drawing all-Russian state lotteries. In total, "Stoloto" offers three dozen of both draw and instant lotteries.

Every third citizen of Russia buys lottery tickets under this brand. At the same time, little is known that the distribution company is purely private. Stoloto is part of the multi-profile Russian holding S 8 Capital , which is owned by Armen Sargsyan.

Lottery tickets are distributed in all 85 constituent entities of the Russian Federation through more than 100 thousand points of sale. The prize can be obtained in 45 thousand of them.

What are the lotteries

There are instant and drawn lotteries.

The winning of the instant lottery is already on the ticket, it is simply hidden under a protective layer. When buying, the result becomes known instantly, it is enough to remove the plastic layer. Such lottery tickets are liked by young people who do not want to wait for the results. Their cost varies from 20 to 300 rubles. The winnings in the instant lottery were also small, compared to the draw lottery, but the joy of recognition came immediately. Recently, prizes in instant lotteries have grown to 30 million rubles.

The results in the drawn lotteries become known when they are drawn, which are held on a schedule. Some TV channels, like NTV, broadcast lottery draws in their programs. 6 lotteries are drawn on the lottery machines in the Stoloto lottery center in Moscow.

Modern draw lotteries are played several times a day. For example, "Gosloto" 4 out of 20 "and" 6 out of 45 "announce the results twice a day," Zodiac "and " Matchball "- three times, " Gosloto "5 out of 36", "Gosloto" 7 out of 49 " - 5 times a day. In such lotteries as Rapido, 12/24 or KENO-Sportloto, the drawing takes place every 15 minutes. You can watch the drawing directly on the Stoloto website.

Draw lotteries are played using lottery drums or random number generators.

How is the drawing held?

Only in the lottery "Russian Lotto" the presenter still pulls out wooden barrels with numbers from the coveted bag on air.

Most lotteries use lottery drums to determine the draw. Lottery drums are glass spheres in which balls of the same weight with cherished numbers "jump" under air pressure. At a certain moment, the suction is turned on, and the nearest ball is sucked up and pushed out. The balls in the lottery drum are absolutely identical, they move at the same speed. The lottery drums are transparent so that the lottery participants can at any time see what is happening inside the lottery drum and how the balls move.

The Draw Commission checks the number of balls and how they are loaded into the lottery drum. The draw takes 4 minutes.

Lottery drums are mechanical devices. Despite the bewitching action, they tend to wear out. They were helped by random number generators, devices that generate electrical noise and convert them at a certain moment into numbers. Generators are installed in special rooms, access to which has a limited number of employees with special clearance.

What win the lottery

The Russian Law on Lotteries prescribes that the prize fund of each lottery must be at least 50% of the proceeds. In some of the lotteries, it reaches 60% or more. Often the prize fund depends on the rules of the lottery, for example, whether there is a super prize or not, or there are fixed prizes.

Lottery distributors say that every fourth ticket wins in Russia. Sometimes there are draws where two tickets out of three or one of two are won. Obviously, each prize rarely exceeds the value of the ticket itself.

Muscovites are most lucky in the lottery. In the capital, they win a total of 4 billion rubles a year. But in other cities, multimillion-dollar prizes are recorded. So, in the Novosibirsk region this year the total gain amounted to 391 million rubles, in Tatarstan - 411 million.

The richest in terms of prizes was the New Year lottery “Russian Lotto”, the prize fund of which amounted to 2 billion 325 million rubles . Then they won 11 million 750 thousand lottery tickets. And in one day appeared in the country 581 millionaires.

In the first half of this year, 17 billion 20 million rubles were drawn in Russia, and the number of winning tickets exceeded 96 million.

Instant lottery "Rapido" brought its participants the largest prize, when a man from the Omsk region won 58 million 117 thousand rubles. In the Sportloto 6 out of 45 Lottery, there were two multimillion-dollar prizes at once: 57, 927 million and 26.464 million rubles.

Who is lucky in the lottery

As statistics show, it is best to buy lottery tickets this year at the Russian Post offices. Of the 1,025 lottery millionaires this year, 255 people, or every fourth, bought the coveted ticket at the post office. 205 lucky ones were bought in Stoloto stores, 142 - in its mobile application, 100 millionaires - in Moscow Lotteries.

In the lottery, men are more fortunate than women. 57% of the winners are men and only 43% are women. One consolation: women win bigger cash prizes.

One of the biggest winnings in the history of lotteries in Russia happened in 2017. Then a pensioner from the Voronezh region won more than half a billion rubles.

Is there a chance of winning the lottery

In Russia, 600 million lottery tickets are sold annually. However, few of us personally know lottery winners. "Popular Mechanics" explains this by that the chance to win, for example, in "Gosloto 5 out of 36" is 1 in 400 thousand. To win the jackpot in this lottery, you need to buy 2,432 tickets worth 200 thousand rubles. The gain will cover the costs, but if you consider that it will have to pay 35% of taxes on it, the benefit disappears altogether.

By the way, lottery winnings are not taxed in Great Britain and Germany.