Can technology boost lottery sales in Spain?

Waterhouse VC's October bulletin looks at the role of neighborhood shops in lottery sales in Spain. The fund visited three shops in Madrid. The owner of one of them showed a printout recording about 1,300 lottery transactions that morning.

SELAE, Spain's state lottery operator, sold tickets worth 10.6 billion euros in 2025. However, less than 3% of these sales came from the company's own website and app. The rest of the sales, including online orders, were attributed to 10,867 authorized retailers.

In 2025, SELAE paid its retailers 775 million euros in commissions. Retailers earn between 4.5% and 6% commission depending on the game. For this reason, a technology needs to pay for itself through extra income or time savings.

The Christmas draw El Gordo sold 3.55 billion euros in tickets in 2025, which is about one third of SELAE's annual sales. Each 200 euro ticket is divided into 10 shares of 20 euros each. This allows friends, families and colleagues to share the same number.

At the mixed-use shops the fund visited, owners know their regular customers. Customers buy tickets and check their results while buying cigarettes or collecting a parcel. The fund believes that solutions such as easy ordering, automatic sales recording and self-service ticket checking could reduce the workload of retailers.