Chinese World Cup bets lift lottery sales

A rush by Chinese to gamble on World Cup results pushed up China's lottery sales sharply in June, according to official data released on Tuesday.

Sports lottery sales surged 83 percent from a year ago to reach 19.24 billion yuan (about $3.13 billion) last month, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said in a statement on its website.

Outside of sporting bets, sales of welfare lottery tickets also rose 18.1 percent year on year to 16.81 billion yuan in June.

In total, China's lottery sales increased 19.2 percent year on year to 178.84 billion yuan in the first half of the year, the data showed.

Among Chinese provinces and cities, Beijing led the upsurge in June, with its lottery sales worth 1.3 billion yuan more than a year ago, while Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Tianjin also posted large increases, according to the MOF.