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Some find opportunity in Spain's crisis

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-10 14:01

Lottery Boost

Shops buying second-hand goods are also doing well. So are cobblers, long spurned by Spaniards who just threw old shoes away and bought new pairs during the boom years, but now want ageing soles repaired.

People queue to buy tickets for Spain's state-run lotteries in downtown Madrid December 4, 2008. Besides pawnbrokers, cobblers, betting shops and cheap mobile phone services are doing a good trade as consumers become more thrifty and companies across most of Spain's struggling economy slash jobs and investment. [Agencies]

On the same Madrid square, people queue to buy tickets for Spain's state-run lotteries. Unlike in some other countries where gambling has suffered as a more discretionary activity, these are also getting a fillip from the downturn.

As more Spaniards buy lottery tickets in the hope a win could make losing their job less of a worry, lottery prizes have reached record levels. In the first half of this year, just one of the state lotteries, the Primitiva, made sales of 1.9 billion euros, a 4.6 percent hike on 2007.

"I'm selling almost double," said lottery kiosk owner Isabel Gonzalez whose family has run the kiosk since 1950. She has been selling tickets here for the last 11 years.

Mercedes Gonzalez, a 33-year-old property valuer in the queue, said she and her partner started playing the lottery a year ago: "It started as a joke with us. You say 'oh well, if we lose our jobs, it doesn't matter because we're going to win the lottery.'"

Now they spend 15 euros between them a week on lottery tickets, hoping they can net a jackpot.

The largest win in the first half was a player in Granada who won 76.6 million euros in the "EuroMillones" lottery, one of nine state lotteries which include football betting and the traditional Christmas "Gordo" lottery.

Spanish gambling firm Codere also said its new betting shops Victoria, run under a joint-venture with Britain's William Hill, were doing good business despite launching in a crisis.

A customer places a bet on a soccer match at the betting shop Victoria in Madrid October 11, 2008. Besides pawnbrokers, cobblers, betting shops and cheap mobile phone services are doing a good trade as consumers become more thrifty and companies across most of Spain's struggling economy slash jobs and investment. [Agencies]

The Victoria betting shops, the first of which opened in April, were the first in Spain after the Madrid and Basque Country regional authorities liberalised their betting laws.

The firm is aiming to close the year with 53 betting shops in the two regions.

"The shops are opening and clients are attending them in a massive way," said Codere Managing Director Jaime Estalella, a board member of Victoria.

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