China Football Lottery

A pool-bet on real football, not a bookmaker's odds

The traditional football lottery is the oldest branch of the China Sports Lottery's football products. Instead of betting against fixed odds set by a bookmaker, everyone who plays a given round pays into a shared prize pool, and the winners split that pool. The games are organized and sold by the State Sports Lottery Administration Center, with provincial sports lottery centers selling within their own regions¹.

The best-known game in the family is the 14-match win-draw-lose game, 胜负彩, where the lottery publishes a list of 14 real football matches and you predict the result of each one. Alongside it sit games built on the same idea but with different numbers of matches and different things to predict, all sold at the same sports lottery counters and all settled on the results of real fixtures.

These games sit within the wider China Lottery system, which runs two state operators: the Sports Lottery and the Welfare Lottery. Football guessing games belong to the Sports Lottery side, and within that side they are distinct from the newer Jingcai games, which we cover separately below.

The games in the traditional family

There are several distinct games, each with its own slip and its own draw:

• 胜负彩, the 14-match win-draw-lose game. You predict win, draw or loss for each of 14 matches on the published list. The multiplier range for repeats is 2 to 99 times³.
• 胜负任选9场, Select 9. You pick 9 matches from the round's list and predict win, draw or loss for each. The prize pool is 64% of total sales, with 1% of sales held as a rollover fund, and the first prize takes 100% of the current prize fund plus any rollover portion².
• 进球彩, the 4 Goals game. You pick 4 to 8 matches and predict the goals scored by each team in each match as 0, 1, 2 or 3+. The prize fund is 65% of total sales, of which 64% goes to the first prize and 1% to the reserve fund³.
• 总进球, the Total Goals game. You bet on the total goals scored by both teams in a match, choosing from 8 options: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7+, where 7+ means seven or more⁴.
• 足球6场半全场, the 6-match half-time/full-time game. You predict both the half-time and full-time result for each of 6 matches, with 9 options per match covering every combination of first-half and final result⁷.

The half-time/full-time options are worth spelling out, because they are the most complex pick on any traditional slip. For each match you choose one of nine combinations: home win/home win, home win/draw, home win/away win, draw/home win, draw/draw, draw/away win, away win/home win, away win/draw, or away win/away win, where the first word is the half-time result and the second is the full-match result⁷.

How to play: picking matches and predicting goals

The mechanics are the same across the family. Each round, the lottery publishes the list of matches for that game. You mark your predictions for each match on a play slip, hand it over at the counter, pay, and receive a printed ticket. To win, you must match the results of all the selected matches in your bet; a single wrong prediction means the bet loses⁷.

Results are settled on the full 90 minutes including injury time of selected major international football matches⁸. Extra time and penalty shootouts do not count, which matters a lot in knockout football: a match that ends 1-1 after 90 minutes is a draw for lottery purposes even if it goes to penalties.

Betting closes 90 minutes before the listed match start time, and betting on matches already in stop time is not accepted¹. So if a match kicks off at 8:00 p.m., the last moment to include it on a slip is 6:30 p.m.

If a match is postponed for more than 36 hours and the new time is unknown, the match is deemed void and stakes are refunded at the original betting amount⁴. Void rounds are refunded at the original sales venue within 60 natural days¹.

Bet types: single and multiple selections

Two ideas run through every game in the family: single bets and multiple bets.

A single bet is one complete set of predictions, one pick per match. In Select 9, for example, choosing exactly 1 prediction for each match makes a single bet². In the 4 Goals game, one prediction for each team in each match is a single bet³.

A multiple bet covers more than one prediction for at least one match. In Select 9, selecting 2 or more predictions for a match turns the slip into a multiple bet, and you can place multiple bets across several matches at once². In the 4 Goals game, two or more selections for any team in any match makes it a multiple³. The ticket then covers every combination of your picks, so the number of bets, and the cost, multiplies quickly.

The win-draw-lose games also offer single-match betting and parlay betting alongside single and multiple selection betting, so you can bet one match alone or string several together⁸.

Multiple bets: 2 to 99 times

If you want to repeat the same bet, you can attach a multiplier. In the traditional football games the multiplier range is 2 to 99 times: you pay 2 to 99 times the base price for the same selections, and if it wins, the prize pays out per bet⁷.

One thing to know: the Ministry of Finance changed the multiplier range for quiz-type lottery games (竞猜型彩票) from 2-99 to 2-50 in February 2019¹⁰. Some game rules published before that date still show the older 2 to 99 range, and English-language summaries of the single-match games likewise list 2 to 50 times¹¹. The traditional pooled games such as the 14-match game and Select 9 continue to show 2 to 99 in their current rules².

A single ticket can carry a lot of betting. The rules allow up to 10,000 bets on one ticket per wager⁶, and the maximum value of a single ticket is CNY 20,000¹.

Price per bet: CNY 2

Every game in the family costs CNY 2 per bet¹. That price is fixed by the rules, and premium or discount sales are prohibited⁶: a station cannot charge you more or less than CNY 2 per bet, whatever the demand for a popular fixture.

Because multiple bets are charged per combination, the CNY 2 price is what makes large slips expensive. A Select 9 slip where you double up on three of your nine matches contains 8 combinations and costs CNY 16; give two matches three predictions each and you are at 9 combinations for CNY 18. Add a 99-times multiplier to a single bet and that one line costs CNY 198.

Prize fund: 65% of total sales

The prize money comes from a fixed share of everything sold in the round. The split differs by game:

Within the prize fund of the pooled games, 72% goes to current prizes and 1% is held as the adjustment fund⁹. The adjustment fund is used to pay prizes that exceed what the current draw takes in, and to make adjustable balance payments¹⁴.

The rest of the sales money is not prize money. In the win-draw-lose games, 9% of sales covers issuance fees and 18% goes to the lottery public welfare fund, which funds sports and public projects¹. The same 73/9/18 split appears across the Sports Lottery's football and basketball products¹³.

The CNY 5,000,000 ceiling

In the pooled traditional games, total winnings on a single ticket are capped at CNY 5,000,000. This cap applies to the 4 Goals game and to Select 9². If the pool math would pay a ticket more than that, the ticket pays CNY 5,000,000 and the excess goes back into the pool system.

The fixed-odds games in the family work differently. Their payouts are capped per bet by parlay size rather than per ticket:

The same ladder of caps applies to the basketball single-match games, so the structure is consistent across the Sports Lottery's fixed-odds products¹⁴.

Claim period: 60 days from each draw

Winners must present the winning ticket at a designated location within 60 natural days of the draw date⁴. If the last day falls on a public holiday or market closure, the deadline extends to the first working day after it¹⁶. Miss the deadline and the prize is treated as forfeited; forfeited prize money goes into the lottery public welfare fund⁸.

For tickets covering several matches, the clock in some games starts only when all match results on the ticket have been published, with the 60 days running from the following day⁸. Keep the ticket safe until then: the printed ticket is the only valid claim document.

Who can play

The traditional football lottery is sold openly at China Sports Lottery stations to anyone who walks up to the counter, including visitors and foreign residents in China. Sales are cash-and-counter only through the official network; there is no legal online channel for these games within mainland China, and the wider rules on gambling in China apply to anything outside the state lottery system.

When you claim a prize, you may need to show identification if the game rules require it¹⁷. Large claims are handled at designated locations rather than at the counter where you bought the ticket.

How the pools compare with Jingcai

The Sports Lottery also runs the Jingcai football games, which look similar but work on fixed odds rather than pools. In Jingcai, the odds for each match are set before sales open and are locked at the moment you bet: the fixed prize shown when you place the bet is what you get, unaffected by later adjustments¹. In the traditional pooled games, by contrast, your prize depends on how many other people made the same predictions, so you only learn the payout after the draw.

The money splits differ too. Jingcai allocates 73% of sales to prizes, 9% to issuance fees and 18% to the public welfare fund, with 72% of the prize fund for current prizes and 1% for the adjustment fund¹³. The traditional pooled games put 64% to 65% of sales into the prize pool². You trade the smaller pool share for the chance at a much bigger single prize, since a popular result in Jingcai pays a fixed, capped amount while an unpopular 14-match sweep can pay out the whole pool to very few tickets.

We cover the fixed-odds side in detail on the Jingcai Sports Lottery Betting page.

What to expect at the counter

You buy these games at a China Sports Lottery station, the small booths and shops with the Sports Lottery signage found across Chinese cities. The counter staff speak Chinese, and the play slips are in Chinese, so it helps to know the game you want by its Chinese name: 胜负彩 for the 14-match game, 任选9 for Select 9, 进球彩 for the goals game.

The process is simple. Ask for the slip for your game, mark your predictions with a pen, and hand it to the staff with your payment. They enter it into the terminal and print your ticket. Check the ticket before you leave: it lists your matches, predictions, number of bets, multiplier and total price, and it is the only thing that can claim a prize.

A few practical points:

• Betting on each match closes 90 minutes before its kickoff, so go early on match days¹.
• Each ticket can hold up to 10,000 bets and cost up to CNY 20,000, but a simple single bet is still just CNY 2⁶.
• Results are published after the last match in the round, and the claim clock runs from the draw date, so note it on your ticket⁴.
• If a match on your ticket is voided, refunds are handled at the original sales venue within 60 natural days¹.

Draw results for the 14-match game, the goals games and the half-time/full-time game are published on the lottery's result pages after each round⁴, so you can check your ticket against the official numbers before going back to the counter.