As reported by the country’s Ministry of Finance, China’s Sports and Welfare Lotteries has revealed a 17.7% drop in sales, marking the lowest year-on-year since the emergence of COVID-19.
Despite the overall loss, sales figures for May came to CNY29.22bn, a 24.9% improvement on April’s total of CNY23.39bn. Sports Lottery sales accounted for CNY15.21bn, down 20.1%, while Welfare Lottery sales were down 15.0% at CNY14.01bn. Digital sales made up the majority of the sales revenue for the month.
China suspended all lottery sales in January in response to the lockdown procedures put in place in a bid to halt the spread of COVID-19. Since then, March saw the reopening of some services, however regions such as Beijing had remained closed until May.
With this being said, the threat of new outbreaks of the virus in the country’s largest city has seen operations once again come under threat, with local officials intending to avoid lottery premises from becoming hubs for ‘super-spreaders.’
Regarding the lottery figures, sales for quiz games saw a 71.6% decline with instant win sales also dropping 9.2% to CNY2.36bn. A 78.8% decline was also witnessed for Video lotteries to CNY916.1m, with keno’s figures rounding off at CNY11.1m – a 24.5% decline.
The January lockdown saw the market decline by 43.4% with sales falling to a further CNY1.3m in February as products were unable to be sold. The figures witnessed here for the month of May continues the promising rise currently being witnessed in the Asian country that began in March and continued into April.
With this being said, as it stands, total lottery sales for the year have witnessed a fall of 49.2% to CNY90.33bn – CNY46.34bn of which is made up from the China Sports Lottery and CNY43.99bn coming from the Welfare Lottery.