If You Win First Prize in Lotto, Who Will You Tell... 1st 'Spouse', 2nd Is a Surprising Result?

Lotto Jackpot Winner Survey
'Who Would You Tell About Winning?'
1st Spouse, 2nd Do Not Tell, 3rd Children

Among the 10 people who won the first prize in the Lotto lottery last year, 3 answered that they would not even inform their family about their winning.

Donghaeng Lottery, the lottery trustee operator, released the results of the "2023 Lotto First Prize Winners Survey" on the 30th. There were 646 first prize winners in the Lotto throughout last year, and the survey was conducted on 260 of the first prize winners. When asked "Who will you inform about your winning?", 47% answered "I will inform my spouse." This was followed by 29% who answered "I will not inform anyone," and 16% who said "I will inform my children."

A lottery store in Jongno-gu, Seoul [Photo by Yonhap News]

Regarding the question of how they would use the prize money, "purchase of housing/real estate" was the most common at 35%, followed closely by "repayment of loans" at 32%. "Helping parents and surrounding family" accounted for 12%.

Seventy-five percent of the first prize winners were male, three times the number of females (25%). By age group, those in their 40s were the most common at 33%, followed by those in their 50s (27%), 60s and above (21%), 30s (14%), and 20s (4%).

One out of four winners purchased the lottery ticket just for fun and ended up winning the first prize. Regarding the reason for purchasing the lottery, 25% answered "for fun, for enjoyable imagination," which was the highest, while 20% answered "expecting a large prize." Next, 16% responded "because I had a good dream," among whom 29% said they dreamed about ancestors, 9% about animals, and 9% about wealth.

Meanwhile, lottery sales in 2023 reached a record high of 6.7507 trillion won, with Lotto sales accounting for about 83.7% at 5.6526 trillion won. The number of households purchasing lottery tickets in Korea is on the rise. According to Statistics Korea, in the first quarter of this year, 2.212 million households purchased lotteries such as Lotto, pension lottery, horse racing, and bicycle racing, accounting for 10.1% of the surveyed households (21.834 million households). One out of every 10 households purchased a lottery ticket, which is the highest proportion in the past five years.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.