A cherished holiday tradition in Costa Rica consists of participating in the madness of the Gordo Navideño, which roughly translates into “Christmas Fat Cat Lottery.” For this holiday season, the jackpot prize of the lottery in Costa Rica paid a cool $10.5 million for whoever held an entero (whole lottery bill), which can be purchased on a fractional basis since each lotto bill holds 40 tickets. Each of these tickets can yield about $6,500 at today’s currency exchange rate, and about 50 percent of lucky ticket holders had already cashed in their tickets just a few days after the lottery drawing.

 

The $10.5 million Gordo is not the only lottery prize during the holiday season, but it is the one that attracts the most attention. The rest of the prizes, which correspond to hundreds of millions of dollars, do not attract as much interest, and thus tend to go unclaimed. The reality is that many lottery ticket buyers in Costa Rica do not bother to check if they won a lesser prize, which results in significant surplus cash.

 

In Costa Rica, the national lottery is run by the Junta de Proteccion Social (JPS), a government entity dedicated to welfare, community outreach and charitable protection of people who are often ignored by society at large; to wit: The poor, disabled, sick, and imprisoned. That millions in lottery prizes are never claimed suits the JPS well; recently, unclaimed funds have been used to benefit female inmates, the public geriatric hospital in San Jose, drug rehabilitation centers, the elderly in Poas, and cancer patients in Puntarenas.

 

In 2006, national newspaper La Nacion published accounting records of JPS that showed more than $2 million in lottery prizes are never claimed in Costa Rica each year, and many of them correspond to lesser prizes of the Christmas lottery. In most cases, holiday lottery tickets in Costa Rica are quickly sold out; these lotto drawings are so popular that second-chance events are held in following weeks.

 

Still, most Ticos keep their eyes on the Gordo, and they quickly dismiss their tickets if they don’t win the big one. Each fractional ticket could pay from about $6 to $1,000 and even more, but many players tend to forget that they purchased a ticket in the first place. When the JPS surveys players to let them know that they may have forfeited their chance to redeem prize money (usually after 90 days), a common response is: “It’s all good. There’s always tomorrow.”