In the world of online gaming, lottery-style games face much less scrutiny than do other gambling offerings. That’s leading to an increase in the number of websites offering lotteries. Some of these sites charge premiums on base lottery prices, while others simply collect data on players’ preferences and habits. Others offer a mix of lotteries and other types of gambling games.
In addition to the national lottery, the country also has several local lotteries run by state-owned companies. These include the Lottery of the People’s Republic of China and the Hong Kong Pools. The latter, in particular, has been growing rapidly since its founding in 1993. The company currently operates over 300 licensed local lotteries in more than a dozen provinces and municipalities, and handles more than 40 million transactions annually.
The most popular game in China is the Chinese New Year’s Lottery, which is usually held at the end of January or early February. It has a prize fund of tens of billions of dollars, and is the world’s largest lottery. In 2009, the total prize money in the New Year’s Lottery was more than $1.5 billion.
Other popular games in the country include the Chinese Football Lottery, which is a form of online sports betting that offers a chance to win a jackpot. In 2008, the jackpot was over $600 million. The Chinese Football Lottery is played by more than ten million people.
The lottery is a major source of income for many impoverished Vietnamese citizens, particularly in urban areas. Selling tickets is often the only way for them to earn enough money for food and shelter. The social security systems in Vietnam are not well equipped to handle the needs of the poor, so selling tickets provides the best opportunity for them to support themselves. On good days, a lottery ticket seller like Huong can make 230 000 VND (11 US-Dollars) or more.
Lottery officials in the communist country of Laos are rigging the system by manipulating winning numbers in order to avoid large pay-outs, sources in the Southeast Asian nation say. Drawings often show numbers that vanish from purchased tickets, or a single number such as 9 appearing only once in a group of purchases.
Private business interests should not be responsible for running the national lottery, a caller told RFA’s Lao Service. “The government should take back control of the lottery so the drawings can be trusted,” he said. The caller added that the business interests involved in the lottery include members of the ruling elite.