China's Ministry of Finance published data on lottery sales for September 2026 on October 19. Total ticket sales came to about $10 billion (67.39 billion yuan at the People's Bank of China rate on October 23), up 27.3% from a year earlier. The ministry attributes the growth to the lingering effect of the FIFA World Cup on sales of tickets with outcome predictions.
That category, bets on match outcomes, drove most of the increase: sales rose 73.1% to about $5.86 billion, adding roughly $2.5 billion over the year. The other categories looked weaker. Numbers games fell 7.3%, and scratch cards dropped 14.9% to about $1.48 billion. Keno, by contrast, grew 19.5% to about $0.61 billion.
By operator type, sports lottery sales reached about $7.57 billion, up 43.2%. Sales in the state charity category fell 5.0% to about $2.47 billion.
The growth reached all 31 provinces. Shandong, Henan, Zhejiang and Jiangsu added the most.
For the first nine months, sales totaled about $81.2 billion, up 14.6% year on year. The sports segment brought in about $59.2 billion (up 25.7%), and the charity segment about $22.0 billion (down 7.3%). Tickets with outcome predictions made up 54.2% of total nine-month sales.
The Ministry of Finance usually publishes October data in November. The exact date has not been announced.
