Thailand Lottery

Thailand’s official national lottery is administered by The Government Lottery Office. The lottery is drawn on the first and the sixteenth of every month.

What does this mean,

Lottery tickets are sold to national wholesalers who then sell them on to local retailers. Tickets are available only from retail agents. Lottery vendors can be found roaming markets, streets, and villages carrying their signature slim wooden ticket briefcases. There are also lottery ticket stands outside shops such as Tesco Lotus and Big C. Lottery tickets come in “ticket-pairs”. The official cost of a single ticket is 40 baht, buying lottery tickets can only be purchased in ticket-pairs, making the official retail price 80 baht.

Lottery tickets

There are two types of Thai lottery tickets. The first is the Thai Government Lottery (TGL) ticket. The second is the Thai Charity Lottery (TCL) ticket. These titles are printed at the upper left of each ticket. Aside from the names, the two differ only in their first prize payouts and the amount of tax to be paid on winnings. TGL tickets have a first prize of three million baht, a bonus prize of 30 million*, and are taxed at 0.5%. TCL tickets have a first prize of three million baht, a bonus prize of 22 million*, and are taxed at 1%.

A Lot of this information is from Wikipedia but some of my insites is from my personal knowledge given to me from my TG whose family sells these tickets for income.

I’m told that the person or persons wanting to sell and earn income from the lottery must first pay out of pocket the purchase price of the number of tickets they wish to sell.  100 tickets @ 70 baht = 7000 baht out of pocket.  Now they can resell these 100 tickets at 80 baht and they will receive their initial 7000 + 1000 profit.  So most resellers will purchase 1000 tickets @ 70,000 baht and if they sell all those tickets at 80 baht they stand to gain 10,000 baht.  So if they have 10,000 baht to support themselves per sale there managing.  As they are able to do this twice a month.

Now what sucks about this process is that the tickets they receive are not predetermined as we in the west are able to do.  I mean if I go to my local retailer that sells lottery tickets, I can select my own numbers.  But in Thailand the order there tickets and they are pre printed and those are the numbers you have to sell.  So if the one reseller doesn’t have the numbers you want you would locate another seller and hope they have your numbers.  Most that buy these tickets are mainly looking at the last three numbers to match.