World Cup football championship good for Taiwan sports lottery

The recent World Cup football championship in Russia has proved a resounding success for Taiwan’s Sports Lottery, according to figures released by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) Tuesday.

Taiwan’s sports lottery sales soared 70 percent from a year earlier and totalled about NT$5.06 billion (US$165 million) in June as interest spiked in the prestigious football competition.

Boosted by the June performance, sports lottery sales for the first half of 2018 rose 11.3 percent year-year-on-year to NT$20.41 billion, the data showed.

The DGBAS said sports lottery tickets accounted almost 30 percent the NT$69.1 billion worth of lottery sales in the six-month period.

Sports lottery sales have been growing over the past few years, the DBGAS said, citing annual sales of NT$14.9 billion, NT$24.0 billion, NT$28.2 billion, NT$31.1 billion, and NT$33.1 billion in the period 2013 to 2017.

In the first six months of 2018, sports lottery sales were more than 60 percent of the total for the whole of 2017.

Last year, 81.6 percent of the sports lottery sales were generated by physical betting stores, while 18.4 percent came from online betting, the DGBAS said. NT$13.6 billion, or about 40 percent, came from betting on baseball games, 36.3 percent from betting on basketball games and 14.2 percent from football games.

All the proceeds from sports lottery sales in 2017 were allocated to sports development.