China Reports Record Annual Lottery Sales

A colossal 19.9% year-on-year jump was posted in China in the last year when it comes to sales of tickets and other official lottery products. The twelve-month period amounted to a total revenue of $75.95 billion!

The data comes from a report published by the country’s Ministry of Finance who outlines the division of these sales by pinpointing them to its two sources: welfare lottery ticket sales have recorded yearly sales of $33.34 billion (3.5% yearly rise)…

…while sports lottery sales skyrocketed to a 36.8% leap for $42.59 billion in turnover!

Tibet As An Exception to the Rule

Official data shows that all 31 mainland provinces saw a yearly increase in lottery sales – with the only notable omission being Tibet, whose sales slumped by 4.3 percent.

The most successful provinces, having the most lucrative period in the previous 12 months, were Jiangxi and Guizhou, where year-on-year rise of over 30% was made. The single province with the biggest volume of lottery sales remains Guangdong…

…whose yearly leap of 15.9% kept its undisputed position of being China’s most lucrative region, with $7.27 billion raked in.

Jiangsu, the home of a major city of Nanjing, followed close behind with a second spot in lottery affluence: its 25.3% year-on-year increase contributed to $6.61 billion in revenue.

December of 2018 alone was 8.4% stronger compared to December of 2017. During this month, sales of sports tickets were 17.8% higher than in 2017, while welfare ticket sales actually took a slight nosedive by 0.2%.

Red Tape Reduced

These figures were heralded by last November’s reports of lottery sales rising by 11 percent – sports lottery contributed to the month’s overall revenue with a 20.1% year-on-year rise, while welfare lottery assisted with a modest 1.6% jump.

In August, authorities of the world’s most populous nation introduced some changes in bureaucracy that became effective in October. The efforts to reduce red tape where lottery products’ offline sale is concerned was welcomed by the local experts on the industry.

However, this move still hasn’t lifted the ban from online sales of offline lottery products which was introduced back in 2015.

Bitcoin on the Brink

China-themed slot games have become wildly popular in recent times, with advent of the so called nouveau riches in a country divided by economic inequality. One of those games is the empress of China-inspired IGT output, Wu Zetian.

Already exerting a full-fledged censorship over internet and some other segments of life, China’s government also has a fiercely unfavorable stance on Bitcoin – the cryptocurrency that, by some reports, could be in grave danger as the country possesses the necessary infrastructure to compromise mining of this digital asset on a large scale.

Concerns over authorities’ rule over mining managers led to rumors that the state, having more direct control over hashrate than any other country in the world, could intervene in a way that could jeopardize the very existence of Bitcoin.

Source:

“China lottery sales rise 20pct in full year 2018”, ggrasia.com, January 28, 2019.