The lottery billed as the world's richest is bigger than ever this year, with prize money totaling $2.4 billion. The Spanish Christmas sweepstakes is known as El Gordo, or the fat one. Winners will be announced this week in a three-hour televised ceremony with all of Spain watching. It's estimated that three out of every four Spaniards buy tickets.

Instead of a single jackpot, El Gordo uses a system that results in thousands of winning numbers. Prizes range from a ticket's face value all the way up to the first prize. Though the event goes back to 1812, this year's version brings a big changes - most notably, first-prize winnings are 50 percent higher -- or about $360,000 each.

The total prize money is up from $2.1 billion last year. Although other lotteries have bigger individual top prizes, Spain's is billed as the world's richest lottery for the total sum of prize money dished out. The idea is for the money to trickle through Spanish society, where office workers, families, sports clubs and other groups often pitch in to buy tickets together.