Why did a Philippine Lottery Produce 433 Jackpot Winners?

Often a lottery jackpot is shared by several players. However, the October 1 Philippine Charity Sweepstake draw saw over 400 players share a $6.17m top prize. Now there are calls for an official investigation into the draw with fears over the integrity of the lottery draw.

That could be embarrassing for the Philippine government as they run the lottery. Just why did so many players each win $13,000 in the draw?

The winning numbers were: 09-18-27-36-45-54 and 433 players shared the top prize. There are many ways to choose your lottery numbers. One way is to use birthdays and anniversaries. With a selection such as this though, we can rule that out.

One theory about why those numbers were so popular is that they are all divisible by nine. Discussions on social media however included several comments claiming that foul play had taken place in the lottery draw.
 

Strange and unusual

Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel is the Minority Leader in the Senate. He’s described the lottery result as both “strange and unusual” and has called for an official hearing to be held. He believes that this is important in order to “maintain and protect the integrity of these gambling games.” This is particularly due to the state involvement in the draw.

The Minority Leader was interviewed about the lottery draw on Filipino radio. He said that if a senate hearing into the draw was held, statisticians would be invited to give their opinion on why there were so many winners. The Lotto system would also be fully explained.
 

Public concern

His call for an official hearing to be held has received support from Senator Risa Hontiveros. The Senator is also concerned that a draw with so many winners will have concerned players. “We just want to rule out any doubts in the public mind that the results have been manipulated.”

“While we recognise that people tend to bet in patters, we also want to make sure the system is secure, free from glitches and trustworthy,” said the Senator.

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