China September lottery sales down amid video lottery suspension

| By Daniel O'Boyle
Chinese lottery sales for September came to CNY35.85bn (£4.14bn/€4.60bn/$5.36bn), up 3.1% from August but still down 0.8% from July and down 1.5% year-on-year, as video lottery closures ended two months of year-on-year growth.
shanghai

Sports Lottery sales made up the majority of revenue after growing month-on-month for the seventh consecutive month to CNY21.90bn, up 5.8% year-on-year. The remaining CNY13.95bn, down 10.9%, came from the Welfare Lottery.

Of the sports lottery revenue total, just under half – CNY10.58bn – came from sports betting, down 7.4% from 2019. A further CNY9.64bn came from sports lottery draw games, up 15.7%.

Almost all of the remaining CNY1.69bn within the sports lottery segment came from instant win games, up 77.9%. An additional CNY70,000 in sports lottery revenue came from video lottery terminals, down 65.0% from 2019.

Of the Welfare Lottery’s CNY13.95bn in revenue, the vast majority – at CNY12.14bn – came from draw games. This total was up 10.5% year-on-year.

A further CNY1.80bn came from instant win games, up 13.7%. Keno, meanwhile, contributed an additional CNY14.3m, down 4.3%.

However, video welfare lottery sales were suspended again in September – as in February, March, April and August – removing a revenue source that brought in CNY31.09bn in 2019.

Through nine months, year-to-date lottery sales are now CNY225.16bn, just under half of which has come during the last three months. This remains 21.7% below 2019, large due to extremely low lottery sales in February and March and continued lower sales in April and May as China dealt with the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

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