China Spent US$11.6 Billion Betting the World Cup While National Team Stayed Home

Chinese gamblers wagered the equivalent of almost US$2 billion per week through legal channels on World Cup games despite their national team failing to qualify.

According to state broadcaster CCTV, the total amount spent on the state-sanctioned China Sports Lottery across the six weeks of the tournament was 83.3 billion yuan or about US$11.6 billion.

Along with the China Welfare Lottery, the Sports Lottery is the only legal form of gambling in the country, although it has a vast illegal gambling ecosystem, including offshore sportsbooks, underground bookmakers, and online betting agents that specifically target Chinese customers.

Numerous studies have concluded that illegal gambling in China dwarfs the legal market. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, citing industry estimates, has valued the country’s illegal gambling market at more than US$145 billion annually, suggesting the actual amount wagered by Chinese citizens on the World Cup was likely far higher than the official numbers.

Ratings Juggernaut

The World Cup was also a ratings juggernaut. CCTV said its tournament broadcasts, special programming, and news coverage generated more than 70 billion cumulative cross-media views by the eve of the final.

During the final between Argentina and Spain, its live broadcasts reached a cumulative audience of 282 million, with peak real-time viewership hitting 41.23 million. The figures represent cumulative views across television and digital platforms rather than unique viewers.

China’s sports lottery consists of both pari-mutuel and fixed-odds-style products, although the latter isn’t quite the same as a commercial sportsbook like FanDuel or Bet365.

The overwhelming majority of World Cup betting today comes through the lottery’s Jingcai Football, where players can bet on match winners, handicaps, correct scores, and other outcomes.

Unlike commercial sportsbooks, the market is operated exclusively by the state, which determines the matches offered and payout structure, with an overall return-to-player of about 73%.

National Team Woes

Unfortunately, China’s enthusiasm for soccer doesn’t translate into results on the pitch. The national team finished fifth out of six in its World Cup qualifying group, a campaign that included one of the most humiliating defeats in its history: a 7-0 loss to Japan, one of its biggest sporting and geopolitical rivals.

The country has only qualified for the World Cup once, in 2002. In 2015, Chinese President and soccer fan Xi Jinping pledged to turn China into a superpower of the game that would one day host and lift the World Cup. But the national team has arguably regressed since then, despite billions being poured into the sport.

Xi has blamed endemic corruption for holding back Chinese soccer, and the sport has spent the past several years mired in a sweeping anti-corruption purge that has jailed senior federation officials, imprisoned former national team coach Li Tie, and resulted in lifetime bans for dozens of players, coaches, and administrators for match-fixing and bribery.