China’s lottery sales top 627.97bn yuan ($90bn) in 2025, up 0.7% y/y

New figures from Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China show China’s state lottery system sold nearly 628bn yuan in 2025, with sports lottery accounting for roughly two-thirds of the market.

China sold 627.97 billion yuan (about US$90 billion) worth of lottery tickets in 2025, a 0.7% year-on-year increase, according to data released by the Ministry of Finance on January 29, 2026. The breakdown shows welfare lottery sales at 208.58bn yuan (+0.3% y/y) and sports lottery sales at 419.39bn yuan (+0.9% y/y), meaning sports lottery continued to dominate overall volumes.

The annual headline comes alongside a softer end to the year: in December 2025, nationwide lottery sales were 52.349bn yuan, down 9.1% compared with December 2024, with both welfare and sports lottery declining year-on-year for the month.

Even with modest annual growth, crossing the $90bn mark reinforces how large and resilient China’s lottery channel remains in terms of consumer spend and public-interest funding flows, while the December dip will be watched as a signal of whether demand is merely seasonal or beginning to cool.