Additional sales outlets have caused a spike in online lottery tickets sales in South Korea, local media reported.
Quoting data from the lottery committee of Republic of Korea’s finance ministry, the Korea Times reported that sales of online lottery tickets in the country, also called Lotto, was up 6.8 percent last year at KRW 3.26 trillion (US$2.71 billion).
The last time that lottery sales peaked in South Korea was in 2004, when it reached KRW 3.3 trillion, the government data showed.
According to the report, the increased lottery sales was “largely driven by the surge in the number of sales outlets from 6,015 at the end of 2014 to 6,361 at the end of last year,” which, in turn, prompted the hiring of additional 512 sales people in 2015.
A survey by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance showed that more than half of South Koreans, or about 5.6.5 percent, bought a lottery ticket at least once in 2015, the Korea Herald reported. Of the 1,000 respondents, more than 93 percent said they spend less than KRW10,000 in buying a lottery ticket.
A lottery player buys an average of 14.2 tickets every year, or once every four week, according to the government survey.
The survey also revealed that 68.1 percent saw the lottery in a positive light, with the respondents saying that “the lottery supports needy people by giving them hope and stimulating their interest in life.”
Encouraged by the increasing popularity of lottery in the country, the South Korean government decided to boost the number of sales outlets by 2,000 between 2015 and 2017. Local media reported that sales of lottery tickets, which were first sold in 2002, have risen for seven years in a row and the government expected sales to continue climbing “when the newly recruited sellers start working.”
