China eyes new domestic football lottery; Hong Kong sets Mark Six jackpot record

China is mulling the launch of a new sports lottery focused on the country’s domestic football leagues.

On Thursday, China’s State General Administration of Sports released its five-year development plan, which included the idea of a new football lottery product that will help fund Beijing’s goal of turning the country into a “top class soccer nation” by 2050.

The plan envisions “speeding up the innovative and creative progress on sports lottery, studying and promoting the process of starting up football lottery” on both the Chinese Super League and China League One. This will involve “adapting to the trend, broadening the lottery trade channel land steadily expanding market scale.”

China’s domestic football leagues are notorious for their susceptibility to match-fixing, which Beijing has blamed for the country’s inability to field a team capable of competing on the international stage. Beijing launched a crackdown on football corruption in 2009 in a bid to inject some badly needed respectability into its national game, a goal the authorities claim has largely been achieved.