Lottery Commission Seeking a Boost

An official of the Lottery Commission said on September 22, “We’re expecting the first place prize money for Internet Lotto to be about one billion won. People who buy Internet Lotto can watch the drawing process through the Internet.” According to the Korea Leisure Business Research Institute, the average prize money for first place Lotto winners last year was 2.4 billion won.

Although the prize money of Internet Lotto is less than that of Lotto, the nation’s biggest lottery game, the commission is planning on encouraging more people to purchase lottery tickets in the long term, by making lottery tickets more accessible through the Internet and by raising the chances of winning.

However, there are critical voices within the government that are saying, “The government’s wrong decisions caused social problems in the recent ‘Sea Story’ gambling arcade affair. This is another scheme to encourage the false hopes of the masses in order to pick their pockets.”

It has been pointed out that the government’s attempts to deal with dropping Lotto sales by launching Internet Lotto are a problem.

According to the conference records available on the Lottery Commission homepage (www.bokgwon.go.kr), “Current sales of Lotto are dropping rapidly due to the ‘purchase fatigue phenomenon.’ There is an urgent need to develop a new product, as long as it doesn’t harm the soundness of the lottery business.”

Lotto sales have dropped from 3.80 trillion won in 2003 to 3.28 trillion won in 2004 and 2.75 trillion won in 2005.

In the “Electronic Lottery Soundness Measures” document that was resolved by the Lottery Commission this May, it was specified that “electronic Lotto tickets are expected to be highly popular among the younger generation and women, who do not like to use off-line stores or do not have access to them.”

The Lottery Commission is expecting sales of Internet Lotto to climb from 65 billion won in 2006 to 200 billion won in 2007 and 300 billion won in 2008. Their goal is to build the profits of the lottery fund to 81 billion by 2008, compared to the 2005 figure of 6.3 billion.

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