Chinas lottery sales in October reached a new low point since May, according to recent reports. The National Day Golden Week festivities resulted in a month-to-month dip in lottery revenue, but despite the ongoing suspension of video lottery, overall sales still climbed by 11.5% year-over-year to 30.72 billion yuan (3.5 billion pounds/3.9 billion euros/4.67 billion dollars).
Sports lottery sales made up the bulk of the total, reaching 18.43 billion yuan. Though this is the lowest figure since June, it represents a 24.0% year-over-year jump.
Digital games were the primary driver of sports lottery sales, generating 8.86 billion yuan in income, a 34.8% year-over-year increase, despite being the lowest sales figure since March. On the other hand, sports betting sales rose by 13.6% to 8.4 billion yuan.
Instant-win sports lottery games brought in 1.36 billion yuan in revenue, up 2.9%, while sports video lottery sales remained low, at just 50,000 yuan.
Meanwhile, welfare lottery revenue came in at 12.28 billion yuan, down 5.4% from 2019, the lowest level since April.
With video lottery terminals (which generated 2.66 billion yuan in revenue in 2019) suspended before being completely banned at the start of 2021, digital games continued to dominate, generating 10.68 billion yuan in revenue, a 20.6% year-over-year increase, but lower than the first six months of the year.
Instant-win games contributed the majority of the remaining total, up 33.9% year-over-year to 1.54 billion yuan.
Although sales of all other games experienced a decrease from the previous year, Keno lottery witnessed a substantial rise, soaring by 320.0% annually and 412.2% monthly, reaching a total of 60.2 million yuan.
Up to this point, overall lottery sales in China have reached 261.4 billion yuan, marking a decline of 23.9% compared to 2019.
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