What is a Banca????

[suzannel]

In every small town and on most streets in the big towns, I see little tiendas with big signs on them stating that they are Banca or Banco... I am wondering what these are and what exactly is their business...
Are they money lenders, loto tickets sellers??????

 

[Hillbilly]

Betting parlors. Most are tied to the National Lottery and also offer betting on NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL etc. Yes Dominicans bet on hockey!! They are conversant on the nuances of the West Coast Offense lr the Nickle Defense....

HB

 

[suzannel]

Hillbilly,

Thank you for the reply, I had been wondering a long time.

Have a great day

 

[london777]

When I hear that word I always think of my first trip to the DR when I was green as grass. I met a chica who proudly told me that her family owned the town "banca" which I assumed meant a bank. Very impressed, I agreed to visit it, riding on the back of her moto. Once we turned off the carretera and raced along an ever-narrowing path through the canefields for miles until I glimpsed a pathetic huddle of shacks in the distance I began to realise she was not talking about a local equivalent to Bank of America. Not a marble column in sight!

 

[mrchris74]

Most rural bancas offer the numbers games only. The village I stayed in had about 12 lottery bancas and just one sports banca. They are typically 4 foot by 4 foot tin shacks, with little more than a computer and a barstool for the cashier. Lottery-style bancas have a sign out front showing the previous day's drawing. The blue numbers are from one lottery (nacional) and the red numbers are from another (pale).

You can play any number between 0 and 99. It is interesting to note that the numbers are drawn independently, thus it is possible for the same number to be drawn 2 or 3 times in the same lottery. You can play anywhere from 1 to 3 numbers, by default your ticket will be for the 'nacional' lottery unless you specify 'pale'. It is also possible to play numbers from both games on the same ticket. The payouts are high. IIRC, a 3 number parlay pays 12,000 to 1. The maximum bet is 8,000.

The bancas open at 8:30am and close again at 10:00am. This isn't for customers as much as for the collector to make his rounds. He will arrive on a motorcycle carrying a backpack full of money. He carries a gun, as does the bodyguard that rides on the back. The collector withdraws the amount on the closing receipt from the till and in 3 minutes is off to the next banca. The banca then re-opens at 3pm and remains until just before 9pm, when the drawing is televised.

So how much does a banca make? Based on observations of the closing receipts over a 2 week period in march and april, I estimated one particular banca to be making about 800 pesos a day. Not exactly a killing but this particular banca is part of a syndicate of 150 similar bancas. Thus I estimate this particular banca franchise to cash flow like this:

Income: 3.6m (800 a day, 30 days, 150 bancas.)
Salaries:
Cashiers (150): 540,000 (3600*150)
Collectors/bodyguards: 150,000 (this is a guess: 10 collectors at 15k)
Rent: 300,000 (2,000 * 150)
Utilities: 120,000 (800 * 150, assuming they pay it)

Net: 2.49 million pesos per month, minus whatever they have to pay the lottery company. Probably one of the more profitable Dominican enterprises.

Hope this helps.

Chris

 

[suzannel]

Chris,
Thank you for the info, as your calculations go you are correct this seems like a lucrative business for someone who owns many of these huts....

I do have some questions;

- are these lotery government based and legitimate????

- are these bancas privately run??? or must the individual obtain a franchise from the government to operate???

 

[mrchris74]

My understanding is that they are private, and totally separate from the national lottery. I mentioned nacional and pale but there are others as well, depending on which syndicate you frequent. The drawings are all conducted and televised simultaneously. I don't know what, if any, licensing fees they have to pay.

As for their legitimacy, I never saw anybody win more than 800 pesos, so its hard to say. There's a banca in SFM that has a sign that says something like "The One That Always Pays", which makes me wonder what would happen if anyone actually did hit the big one.

Chris

 

[suzannel]

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions.

Suzanne

 

[PrincesseEm]

My friend won RD$10,000 when I was there last week, so it is possible to win more than RD$800, but as with any gambling it's "the luck of the draw"!