Websites halt sales of lottery tickets
Print Edition
Online lottery sales were halted on a number of websites over the weekend as a deadline set by authorities for provincial and municipal governments to investigate and report on sales was reached.
Caipiao.taobao.com, a platform developed by Alibaba to sell tickets for China's welfare lottery and its sports equivalent, said it had halted sales at 5am on Saturday, but tickets bought before that would be valid.
The website said that the decision was made in accordance with the requirement of the China Welfare Lottery Management Center and the China Sports Lottery Management Center.
Tencent’s 888.qq.com, NeatEase’s cp.163.com and Sina’s aicai.com also said they had suspended sales.
They said people who had bought lottery tickets would not be affected and that the websites would continue to provide lottery news and information.
According to sina.com.cn, at least 38 websites had halted their lottery ticket services.
Buying tickets online has become increasingly popular in recent years because of the convenience but there have been complaints about orders not being confirmed in time, resulted in some people missing out on prizes. There have also been accusations that some websites might have been holding on to customers’ money rather than actually buying tickets.
On January 15, central authorities issued an order asking all provincial and municipal governments to investigate online sales before March 1 and submit their findings.
Regulations on online lottery management state that websites have to seek ministerial approval to sell tickets.
In practice, only 500wan.com and sporttery.cn were approved as pilot websites, while the others operated in cooperation with provincial or municipal lottery management centers, leading to nonstandard practices and competitive chaos, sina.com.cn said.
Last year, lottery tickets worth more than 80 billion yuan (US$12.77 billion) were bought online.
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