Instant Lottery Sales Surge as High-Frequency Games Exit, Reaching 119 Billion Yuan in 2023

Instant lottery tickets have seen notable sales growth in recent months, drawing attention to their market positioning and product evolution. Academically classified as scratch-off instant lottery, these tickets are purchased and revealed on the spot, offering a payout rate of up to 65%, higher than lotto-style games such as Double Color Ball. Most prizes fall within a small range of a few yuan to just over ten yuan. The format was invented in the United States in 1974 and later introduced to China after the lottery market opened. In 2005, the welfare lottery renamed its instant products "Guaguale," and in 2008, the sports lottery introduced a similar product under the name "Dingguagua" to coincide with the Olympic Games. National sales of instant lottery products reached 20.085 billion yuan in 2008 and 22.5 billion yuan in 2018, representing roughly 4% of the total 511.4 billion yuan in national lottery sales.

From 2021 onward, instant lottery sales grew markedly, with their share of total lottery sales rising to about 20%. This shift is linked to policy adjustments in the lottery industry. In October 2020, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the General Administration of Sport jointly issued a notice requiring the orderly withdrawal of high-frequency quick-draw lottery games and calling for the introduction of games with lower stimulation, lower addiction potential, and stronger entertainment value. High-frequency quick-draw games, which draw results every ten to twenty minutes, included products such as "Shishi Cai," "11 Select 5," and "Kuai 3," and at their peak accounted for roughly 40% of total welfare and sports lottery sales. These games ceased sales around the Spring Festival in 2021, after which instant lottery sales rose, reaching 119 billion yuan in 2023.

High-frequency quick-draw games were originally introduced to address the rampant problem of underground private lotteries. In the late 1990s, rural areas of Guangdong and Hainan saw widespread participation in "maima"-style underground gambling, in which players selected numbers from 1 to 49 and bet against private bookmakers, with results based on the Hong Kong Mark Six draws. At its peak, Hainan's private lottery generated annual sales of 1.8 billion yuan, while in Fencun Town, Chun'an County, Zhejiang, one million person-bets were placed over five years among a population of 80,000. To channel demand toward legal channels, Guangdong launched the "Haocai 1" lottery in 2003, with gameplay similar to private lotteries and a payout rate raised to 65%. Other regions subsequently introduced high-frequency products such as "11 Select 5," "Kuai 3," and "Shishi Cai." While these products squeezed the space for private lotteries, their own addiction risks drew concern after more than a decade of development, ultimately leading to their withdrawal in 2021.

In replacing high-frequency quick-draw products, instant lottery tickets have continued the approach of using lower-addiction games to channel gambling demand. Compared with high-frequency games, scratch-off tickets lack consecutive draw mechanisms, do not support multiple-bet chasing, and have limited per-ticket face values, making them relatively less addictive. Nonetheless, some users still resort to borrowing money to purchase tickets or over-invest in these products.