Tombola (raffle)
Tombola is a game which originated in Southern Italy. With the massive Italian emigration of the 19th and 20th centuries, the game was exported abroad, where it took different forms. A variation of the game is a popular form of raffle in the UK and elsewhere.
Original Italian game
In Italy, a tombola is a traditional board game, first played in the city of Naples in the eighteenth century. It is similar to the game of bingo. It is mostly played at Christmas time, and prizes are often only symbolic.
UK game
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In the United Kingdom, a tombola is a form of raffle in which prizes are pre-assigned to winning tickets. Typically numbered raffle tickets are used, with prizes allocated to all those ending in a particular digit (traditionally a five or a zero). Players pay for a ticket, which they then draw at random from a hat or tombola drum, and can instantly see whether or not they have won a prize. Tombolas are popular at events such as village fêtes and coffee mornings, when it is expected that not all the players will be present at the end of the event.
In some other languages such as French, Bulgarian or Slovak, "Tombola" is a general word meaning raffle.