Continuing a trend that began in February and aggregated sales for China’s pair of state-run lotteries reportedly fell by 12.7% year-on-year last month to stand at just over ¥35.5 billion ($5.1 billion).

Pair plummets:

According to a Wednesday report from GGRAsia citing official data from the giant nation’s Ministry of Finance, the China Sports Lottery recorded May sales of around ¥19 billion ($2.7 billion), which represented a decline of some 10% year-on-year, while its compatriot China Welfare Lottery suffered an even steeper 15.7% deterioration to see its monthly revenues come in at approximately ¥16.4 billion ($2.3 billion).

Comparable consternation:

The government figures reportedly also showed that overall sales for the two lotteries had fallen by about 4.7% year-on-year since the start of January to about ¥177.8 billion ($25.8 billion). This trend was purportedly led by the China Welfare Lottery as its comparable revenues for the five-month period dropped by 10.6% to just short of ¥81.9 billion ($11.9 billion) although the China Sports Lottery managed to chalk up a 1% rise to hit slightly shy of ¥96 billion ($13.9 billion).

Nationwide trend:

GGRAsia reported that the official data moreover indicated that aggregated lottery sales for May were lower in 28 of China’s 31 mainland provinces when compared with the same 31-day period in 2018. However, Guangdong Province remained the most lucrative market in the nation of some 1.4 billion people despite recording a 9.3% decline in monthly revenues to ¥16.4 billion ($2.3 billion).

Jiangsu Province occupied second spot when it came to aggregated May lottery sales in China even though its tally of just over ¥15 billion ($2.1 billion) represented a comparable decline of 1.2% while third-ranked Shandong Province actually recorded a 3.5% year-on-year rise to bring in a bit beyond ¥14.4 billion ($2 billion).