Lotto sweepstakes work in this way –
You buy a ticket. You then choose 6 numbers.
The lottery administrators draw out the 6 winning numbers.
To win the lottery, your chosen 6 numbers must exactly match the numbers drawn by the system.
In the case of Phillippines, all the 6 winning numbers were multiples of 9.
The jackpot prize is 236m peso ($4 million) Grand Lotto jackpot.
This means that each of the winners will get about 500,000 Peso.
Why is this newsworthy?
This is newsworthy because usually there are 1-2 winners to a jackpot. It is very rare for 433 people to pick the exact same numbers to be winners to a jackpot.
The other times that a lottery had multiple winners:
December 2020: 20 people shared the jackpot in South Africa’s National Lottery.
1989: McDonald’s Monopoly Stickers (You can find out more about it through a docuseries called McMillions)
Who is saying what?
The administrator of the lottery scheme – Melquiades Robles, general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), has assured the public that the drawing of the numbers cannot be rigged, and while the results are remarkable, they are not impossible, because many people tend to choose numbers that follow a certain pattern. So, getting so many winners is not impossible.
Philippines senate minority leader Koko Pimentel has called for an inquiry into the “suspicious” results.