Lottery sales in South Korea continues to see a positive growth in the first half of 2016, thanks to rising demand for chance games in the country.
Quoting data compiled by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, Yonhap News Agency reported that sales of lottery tickets reached KRW1.89 trillion (USD1.69 billion) in the first six months of the year—a 6.9 percent spike from the KRW1.77 trillion (USD1.58 billion) in the same period last year.
That figure makes up 50.3 percent of the government’s KRW3.76 trillion (USD3.35 billion) sales target for 2016, the ministry said.
Strong demand for online lotteries was the main factor in the overall growth. Government data showed that online lottery ticket sales in the country rose 8.2 percent to hit KRW1.74 trillion (USD1.55 billion) in the January-June period.
Meanwhile, offline lottery ticket sales suffered a 15.7 percent drop on-year, reaching KRW79.4 billion (USD70.69 million), while pension lottery sales went up 3.5 percent to KRW50.2 billion (USD44.69 million).
A lottery player in South Korea buys an average of 14.2 tickets every year. That’s about once every four weeks, according to the government. The Ministry of Strategy and Finance ran a survey last year, which showed that more than half of the residents in South Korea—roughly 56.5 percent—bought a lottery ticket at least once. Of the survey’s 1,000 respondents, more than 93 percent said they spend less than KRW10,000 (USD8.90) in buying a lottery ticket.
The last time that lottery sales peaked in the country was in 2004, when it reached KRW3.3 trillion (USD2.94 billion), according to government data.
In 2015, the online lottery sector saw a jump in sales mainly due to 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.
