Due to the increasingly difficult economic conditions in Spain and the rest of Europe, lottery spending in Spain has fallen by €151 million for the first 34 weeks of this year which is a decline of approximately 3% compared to the same period last year.

This news of this decline in ticket sales for the Spanish El Gordo state lottery comes as Spanish households continue to compete against rising unemployment and ever-increasing levels of debt across the country. Spain’s Ministry of Finance claims that the total lottery spending between January 1st and August 16th 2009 was just under €5 billion, down from over €5.1 billion for the same period last year, amounting to an approximate drop in ticket sales for the El Gordo lottery of €150 million. However there is one lottery which the Spanish public are continuing to spend their money buying tickets for.

The EuroMillions trans-continental lottery has bucked the trend of falling lottery ticket sales in Spain this year. The El Gordo Spanish lottery offers it’s players a one-in-three chance of buying a winning ticket with a huge 70% of all ticket sales proceeds being made available for the prize fund, compared to 40 to 50% which is the rough average of the payout structures of most north American and European lotteries for example. However the lure of the huge international rollover lottery jackpots and cheaper tickets seems to have swayed the Spanish public into playing the EuroMillions as opposed to their own El Gordo lottery, whose operators have designed it’s format to ensure that more people win but are rewarded with smaller prizes, possibly reducing the excitement of playing the El Gordo for Spanish citizens.

You can join the Spanish and the rest of Europe in playing the EuroMillions lottery, even while sat right there at your computer. You can buy tickets for the EuroMillions and many other lotteries from around the world right here at Online-Lotto. Just select the lottery you would like to play from the “Play Online Lotto” list to the right of this article and start picking those lucky numbers.