A Bloemfontein man wants to pay off his debts, take his family on holiday to Cape Town and invest about of his R880,198 winnings, said the National Lottery Operator Ithuba on Wednesday.
The man played SportStake13, which allows players to select a result from 13 predetermined matches drawn from various professional soccer leagues around the world and predict a home win, draw or away win.
His is one of the biggest jackpot wins of the soccer-based score prediction lottery. He won from a draw on November 30, after playing with a wager of R32 using the manual selection method.
“Being a soccer fanatic, I watch international games live on TV and when I’m not able to, I ensure I record these matches to watch after work. This is how I keep up to date with soccer developments. Soccer magazines also help me analyse games,” he told Ithuba.
The man said he realised he’d won after checking results on Ithuba’s website and had kept his ticket in his wallet.
He said he would continue to play all the lottery games with the hope that one day, he will be lucky enough to win an even bigger jackpot so he can fulfil his dream of starting a business in the construction and engineering sector.
The head of corporate relations at Ithuba, Busisiwe Msizi, congratulated the man and expressed confidence that we would see more jackpot winners.
“SA is a sports-loving country, especially soccer, and there is a huge uptake for sports games that are simple, affordable and offer big jackpots. Like all the other games in the National Lottery portfolio, we are confident that this game and SportStake8 will continue to grow and generate more jackpot winners,” she said.
Msizi said SportStake13 had paid out more than R141m to date, with the biggest jackpot paid out a whopping R1.7m in January 2019.
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