Last month reportedly saw aggregate ticket sales for China’s pair of state-sponsored lottery games deteriorate by some 34.8% year-on-year to stand at slightly above ¥27.55 billion ($3.91 billion).

According to a report from GGRAsia citing official figures from the giant nation’s Ministry of Finance, the October figure represented the ninth consecutive month of year-on-year declines in combined revenues for the China Welfare Lottery and its compatriot China Sports Lottery.

Expedient explanations:

The data reportedly also showed that October sales for the China Welfare Lottery decreased by 33% year-on-year to about ¥12.68 billion ($1.81 billion) while takings from the China Sports Lottery crashed by an even steeper 36.2% to stand at approximately ¥14.87 billion ($2.11 billion). The Ministry of Finance purportedly detailed that the decays were due to the implementation earlier this year of new rules governing such games alongside the closure of outlets over the course of the month’s seven-day ‘Golden Week’ national holiday.

Long-term lag:

GGRAsia moreover reported that the October figures mean that the lottery market in China has now suffered a 19.3% year-on-year drop in aggregated ticket sales to around ¥343.36 billion ($48.84 billion) for the first ten months of 2019. This wane was purportedly led by the China Sports Lottery with courtesy of a 22.3% deterioration to roughly ¥187.58 billion ($26.68 billion) while the China Welfare Lottery experienced a comparable 15.4% shrinkage in ten-month takings to ¥155.78 billion ($22.16 billion).

Meager success:

Regarding October figures from each of China’s 31 provinces and GGRAsia reported that only Tibet managed to chalk up a comparable increase in lottery ticket sales while neighboring Sichuan Province was the sole territory to record a ten-month swell courtesy of a 6.26% year-on-year boost in associated revenues to ¥15.41 billion ($2.19 billion).

Guangdong domination:

However, the data reportedly furthermore showed that Guangdong Province had once again retained its position as China’s most lucrative lottery market as the territory’s ten-month tally reached ¥32.15 billion ($4.57 billion), which itself represented a regression of 19.8% year-on-year.