As reported by iGB, significant disruption to the market as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak has seen the Chinese Lottery post sales losses of 41.7% year-on-year in the first half of 2020 CNY123.90bn (£13.75bn/€15.09bn/$17.69bn).
Included in this figure is a CNY59.29bn contribution from the Welfare Lottery (down 39.4%), and CNY64.61bn from the Sports Lottery (43.7% decrease). Moreover, regarding the largest contribution across both lotteries, this came courtesy of the CNY90.22bn raised by digital ticket sales which in turn posted a 18.9% decrease when compared to the same period in 2019.
Video lottery sales continued the downward trend for the operator, posting the largest decline of 79.9% year-on-year, ending the six month period with CNY5.06bn, with prediction-based games following closely behind having witnessed a 72.6% fall to 17.08bn.
Regarding the lottery’s other verticals, Instant win sales witnessed a 16.8% decline with Keno also seeing a sharp decrease of 51.1% to post CNY11.49bn and CNY37.8m respectively.
The news follows on from the market’s strongest monthly results of the year where it posted declines of 3.4%, marking its lowest year-on-year decline reported in the monthly figures since the presence of COVID-19 and its resulting lockdowns.
In that month lottery sales totalled CNY33.57bn, with CNY15.30bn coming courtesy of the Welfare Lottery (down 3.9%), and CNY18.27bn from the Sports Lottery (down 3.1%).
June also reported year-on-year growth on a host of verticals, with digital lottery sales rising 21.3% when compared to 2019 to CNY22.71bn and instant win sales registering a 30.2% increase to CNY2.98bn.
June was also the month that saw 13 provinces across the country report monthly growth in sales, of which Xinjiang, Tibet and Shaanxi were the top performers. With this being said, all Chinese provinces have since reported sales decreases for the six month period as a whole.