Where Do All the Lottery Winners Go?

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

The first thing that comes to one’s mind when thinking of the lottery is the biggest prize of all – the big jackpot, which towards the end of last year created frenzy amongst the people hit by the lottery fever as the National Lotteries Board Mahajana Sampatha jackpot prize money amounted to over Rs. 40 million: the biggest prize to be offered in the country so far. It was finally won in November last year by a labourer in Moratuwa – a literal rags to riches story indeed. The current jackpot stands at an impressive Rs. 24 million, waiting to be won by some lucky person.

Buying a lottery ticket is just one of those things you happen to do from time to time. Not that you really expect to win anything, but what’s the harm in shelling out Rs. 20? It at least gives you the faint hope that you would strike it big and become a millionaire overnight! Rs. 20 for a nice daydream like that isn’t too much to ask for. In reality, you would be lucky to even win back the 20 bucks you spent on the ticket.

But then there are those people who diligently make it a point to buy tickets every week, sit in front of their televisions, staring at the ticket, then at the screen and then back to the ticket again, daring to hope that they may hold the winning combination in their hands. Sri Lanka certainly seems home to many people of the sort — the Development Lotteries Board alone has declared that since its establishment 22 years ago, it has contributed Rs. 7,355 million out of its profits to the President’s Fund.

The establishment of the first lotteries board goes back to the year 1955, when the Hospital Lotteries Board was launched in the country by the government as a means of improving health services to the public. The first lottery draw in Sri Lanka was on September 15, 1955, when a ticket was priced at a mere 50 cents and D.K. Naide emerged as the first lucky winner of that draw.

In 1963 the lottery was renamed the National Lotteries Board and the grand prize up for grabs at the first draw was a Benz valued at Rs. 100,000 at the time.

Today, the Development Lotteries Board and the National Lotteries Board together hold 14 different draws every week. Different combinations allow one to win varying amounts of money in each of these lotteries, the prize money ranging from Rs. 20 to Rs. 10,000,000.

With so many lottery draws every week, one would expect there to be more winners of the large cash prizes. However, if there are winners they are rarely heard of. Winning the lottery seems to be a largely unpublicised event, mostly because the winners themselves prefer it that way, fearing the long line of relatives and friends that will form outside the winner’s doorstep begging for loans if the winnings were publicised.

It is also understood that the prize money is not received by the winner immediately. A long process ensues after the money is won where many tax deductions and other amounts are deducted from the prize, after which the winner will receive the money a couple of months after actually winning the draw.

The recent winners of the large cash prizes include P.D.N. Kottage from Moratuwa, who won the super prize of  the 2,175th Mahajana Sampatha draw, worth Rs. 51,883,541. K.A.P.J. Supavithra from Ambalangoda was the super prize winner of the 497th Supirivasana lottery draw, receiving 11,449,956.50. The winner of the latest airport draw received a BMW 5 Series car.