Taking a gamble on the World Cup lottery
Print Edition
WHEN England played Uruguay in the World Cup last week, Lulu Wu was very much hoping Roy Hodgson’s men would get the job done in style.
They didn’t. Luis Suarez worked his magic for the South Americans and England slumped to a 2-1 defeat.
Not only disappointed that her team was all but on its way out of the tournament in Brazil, Lulu was also miffed at the fact that she’d lost the bet she placed on England to win the game via an online “lottery” website.
Thankfully she had also bet on there being three goals in the game. And that meant she ended the day on top, financially at least.
“I don’t know much about soccer or betting, but I was delighted when I won,” said Wu, who was told about online betting by her friends.
Even though the Chinese team didn’t make it to this year’s World Cup finals, many people like Wu are using the event as an excuse to engage in some fairly serious gambling via websites such as 500.com, Alibaba’s Taobao Lottery and Tencent’s QQ Lottery.
On the opening day alone, more than 150 million yuan (US$24 million) worth of bets were placed.
By the time the winner has been decided next month, Chinese gamblers will have wagered about 10 billion yuan, according to the National Sports Lottery Center, the industry regulator.
“The World Cup has definitely been a catalyst,” Li Zichuan, a researcher of Beijing-based Analysys International.
The amount taken this summer by China’s “lottery companies,” as they are euphemistically known, has soared, he said.
The World Cup is the first major sports event to be held since online sports betting was legalized in China, Li said.
In January 2013, the Ministry of Finance lifted the gambling ban that had been in place since 2008.
Though the authorities refer to the pastime as a “lottery,” the only resemblance to an actual random draw is that a proportion of the money wagered through authorized websites (22 percent) is set aside for charitable causes.
To all other intents and purposes it’s gambling. Punters select a market — match winner, total number of goals — and put down their money.
Of the pooled funds, 65 percent is paid out in winnings and 13 percent is kept by the operators. And that means good business for the websites. Their combined revenue in the first quarter rose 19 percent year on year to 14.6 billion yuan, Analysys said.
Next year the market is expected to surpass 100 billion yuan.
According to Pan Zhengming, chief finance officer of Shenzhen-based 500.com, more than 400 million soccer bets have been placed every day since the World Cup began. On a regular day, the website handles about 100 million bets, he said.
The New York-listed company is expecting its second-quarter revenue to rise 30 percent month on month and 90 percent year on year to between 1.31 billion and 1.38 billion yuan.
According to Alibaba, more than 4 million Chinese people gambled via the Taobao Lottery site on June 16. Many bets were placed through handsets.
Other major players in the online gambling market include Tencent, Baidu, Sohu and JD.com. JD even offers gamblers free bets if they set up direct links to their bank accounts.
In a bid to lure more customers, several companies have integrated their gambling sites with other services, such as online shopping, third-party payments and social-networking.
Among those is football fan Xie Lingning, who said he bet 100 yuan on each of the opening games and lost on most of them. But, Xie said, he will not give up because he likes to talk about his bets on social platforms like WeChat.
World Cup fever is set to boost overall “lottery” sales in China by 30 percent, according to media reports.
Betting via handsets is expected to be the fastest growing segment in the market, thanks to easy access and low entry thresholds, such as the minimum 2 yuan bet offered by Taobao Lottery, analyst Li said.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
