SA LOTTERY : LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SOUTH AFRICAN LOTTERY

The good old SA lottery has been creating winners for years now although it did start late when compared to national lotteries being run in other western countries. I guess we should call it then the “Good Old” but one cant help but feel that there is a love hate relationship between the SA lottery and the punters that buy the tickets. How many times have you been sitting in a cue in PicknPay when someone pipes up saying “Im gonna win the lottery this weekend” or “You gotta be in it to win it, you better just buy one ticket”.

Im sure like us, you have heard it all when it comes the SA lotteries and the lottery board. As recently as June this year the company that administers the SA lottery was replaced by a newcomer called ” ITHUBA Holdings Proprietary Limited (RF)”. This entity claims to want to achieve the following, and I quote: ” ITHUBA will re-invigorate the National Lottery through optimising the consumer experience, restoring faith and trust in the National Lottery, and showcasing its positive social contribution to our society”. Mr Rob Davies, the Minister of Trade and Industry has apparently committed himself and the entire department to fully implement the change of licensee will be handled with no issues. Good luck to ITHUBA and lets hope you can deliver on your stated goals. Nothing should really change in terms of being a customer although we would like to see them allow punters to purchase SA lottery tickets online.

For those readers that don’t know, The SA lottery consists of 4 main draws, these include: The Lotto, Lotto Plus, Powerball Jackpot and SportStake.

The Lotto is the traditional lottery game played by most players in SA. You can play this game using the quick pick option where the SA lottery system will randomly choose your 6 numbers. Alternatively, you can manually choose your own 6 numbers out of a possible 1 to 49. Typically this would be done at an offline kiosk so simply take your Lotto Betslip and use a pen or pencil to mark your 6 numbers. Take your betslip to the cashier at the shop and submit the skip so he/she can process your ticket for you. Make sure to write your name and contact number on the back of the ticket and take your receipt and store it in a safe place and look online for the results or tune in live to SABC 2 every Wednesday and Saturdays at 9PM to watch the live draws.

You can play as many lines as you want when playing this SA lottery game. A single line at the Lotto costs just R3.50 including VAT. Note that some sites out there sell tickets online and this price might be about 20-50% higher. The main reason for this is these sites are actually just courier services, they go and buy the tickets for you and they take a commission on the ticket price plus a percentage of the winnings they claim.

Lotto Plus – The LOTTO Plus game is the exact same game as the standard LOTTO however with one additional number and an extra jackpot should you get the chosen number.

The Powerball Jackpot is slightly different to the standard lotto game. Players choose 5 numbers from 1 to 45 and 1 extra number is also chosen from 1 to 20. The extra number is also an additional jackpot amount hence the name Powerball Jackpot. Players can choose multiple draws which allows them to play the same numbers over multiple draws that are or will be taking place. A single Power Ball ticket costs R3.50 Inc VAT. Once you have purchased your ticket make sure to store it safely and watch the live draw Power Ball draw taking place on Etv every Tuesday and Friday’s at 9PM.

This is one of the more recent games launched by the SA lottery. It cleverly combines live sporting results and fixtures together with a lottery format. You play by predicting outcomes of 12 predetermined match fixtures drawn from South African, English and other identified professional soccer games and fixtures. As with normal sports betting, you take your betslip and you choose from 3 possible results: 1) For home win, 2) For a draw, and 3) For a home loss (Away win). To confirm a valid bet, it must consist of one selection per each 12 fixtures. The min price per a bet is R1.00 including VAT and a max bet per a fixture is R1,000. Note that there is no quickpick or manual number selection option, the results of the draw are based on what you predicted in those 12 fixtures.