This Spring Festival, young people buy scratch tickets in shopping malls

Wen| New Product Strategy Finance  Wu Wenwu

This Spring Festival, young people buy scratch toys in shopping malls, reflecting that scratch toys have become a popular consumer product during the Spring Festival. However, the multi-faceted nature behind the hot sales of scratch toys is also worthy of attention.

01 This Spring Festival, young people buy scratch tickets in shopping malls

Although construction has started, the topic of Spring Festival consumption continues to be hotly debated, especially the movie craze. According to data from Lighthouse Professional Edition as of 10:42 on February 9, new Spring Festival films in 2025 will exceed 13 billion yuan, including the hit “Nezha 2” Related topics are constantly trending.

According to New Products Finance, among the many popular consumer goods categories in 2025, lottery shops in shopping malls, especially scratch tickets, are selling very well.

A lottery shop in the largest shopping center in a town in Linshen, Dongguan, is open normally during the Chinese New Year. The business of this store is several times higher than usual, which can be described as bursting.

The shop assistants in this store are extremely busy, and the prompt sound of collection and payment is kept. There are many people entering the store to buy scratch toys, and sometimes they are full.

Interestingly, many are young people, friends, couples or alone, who go to lottery stores to buy scratch tickets.

It’s the New Year, and young people flock to the lottery shops in the mall to buy scratch tickets, hoping to win the prize. New luck in the New Year, maybe they can really win a big prize! Buying scratch toys during the New Year has a different meaning than buying them in normal times.

The lottery shop in this shopping center in Dongguan sells a lot of scratch tickets during the Spring Festival, which is a microcosm of the booming business of lottery shops operating in many places across the country during the Spring Festival.

Every year around the Spring Festival is a small peak season for scratch ticket sales. Fucai and Sports Lottery will launch new scratch ticket products for the Chinese New Year, which still attracts many consumers.

During the Spring Festival, many places are also promoting scratch music. For example, according to Dazhong. com, during the Spring Festival of 2025, Weifang Fucai carefully organized and carried out the Fucai scratch music Spring Festival mini store activities, and many regions in Shandong carried out scratch music news warm-up during the Spring Festival. Publicity reports.

Shanghai Fucai Paper published an article saying that the Spring Festival is closed, and scratch clubs will accompany you to receive good luck. During the Spring Festival, more than 400 welfare lottery outlets in 16 districts across Shanghai sold scratch tickets and opened lottery tickets.

During the Spring Festival, there was another hot search news about scratch tickets. A lottery player in Chongqing won the million-dollar scratch ticket prize, but was snatched back by the owner of the lottery shop. The two sides triggered a dispute and then called the police. The local police station responded that no lottery tickets were snatched because relevant people were not sure about the redemption process and had told the winning lottery players to take the lottery tickets to the lottery center to redeem the prizes after the market opened.

It can be predicted that during the Spring Festival, lottery shops that are still open in shopping malls, scenic spots, and downtown areas will usher in another wave of scratch-and-see consumption craze.

02 2024Are scratch sales declining every year?

While the sale of scratch tickets in lottery shops in shopping malls continues, the 2024 national lottery sales data has attracted market attention and heated discussion.

“New Products Lue Finance” noticed that on February 9, the topic of lottery sales exceeding 600 billion yuan last year hit the Baidu Hot Search Financial List.

In line with expectations, national lottery revenue will hit a record high in 2024. According to data recently released by the Ministry of Finance, a total of 623.486 billion yuan of lottery tickets were sold nationwide in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 7.6%.

How high is the record high created by this data? The answer is still surprising!

Wang Xuehong, a lottery expert and researcher at the Financial Center of the China Academy of Fiscal Sciences, told First Finance and Economics that this is the first time since China began selling lottery tickets in 1984 that the annual lottery sales revenue exceeded 600 billion yuan.

According to historical public data, China’s lottery revenue has generally maintained annual growth, exceeding 100 billion yuan in 2008, 200 billion yuan in 2011, 300 billion yuan in 2013, 400 billion yuan in 2017, and 500 billion yuan in 2018.

However, since then, lottery sales revenue has not continued to grow to a new high. Due to the adjustment of lottery game rules, strengthened supervision and epidemic risk control, lottery sales revenue once fell below 400 billion yuan in 2020. Starting from 2021, lottery sales revenue has continued to rebound and eventually hit a record high.

American economist Leonard Lauder proposed the lipstick effect, which means that when the economy is depressed, people’s consumer psychology becomes more rational, and consumers will buy less bulk commodities and instead buy lower-priced goods, such as Lipsticks, perfumes and cosmetics.

In the same way, the lottery industry is a typical special industry with counter-trend growth, and there is also lottery economics behind it.

The trend of rejuvenation of lottery consumption is becoming more and more obvious, especially instant lottery tickets/scratch tickets, which have attracted many young people to buy in the past two or three years. Young people’s buying scratch tickets and other topics have been on hot searches many times.

It is worth noting that sales of scratch toys actually declined in 2024. According to data from the Ministry of Finance, sales of ready-to-open lottery tickets in 2024 will be 116.057 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2.5%. This growth rate will be 100.2% in 2023.

Logically speaking, scratch sales are so popular, scratch sales should increase in 2024. Why did they decline instead?

The main reason behind this is that the sales of scratchables have soared in several months in 2024, but the supply is limited, resulting in a situation where scratchables are out of stock.

During 2024, due to the popularity of scratch-off toys and the shortage of scratch-off toys, the supply exceeded demand. Lottery stores limited ticket limits and people who wanted to buy scratch-off toys could not buy them. This topic has been on hot searches many times last year.

03 The multiple aspects behind the hot sales of scratch music

Young people like to buy scratch tickets, and the lottery economics behind the hot sales of lottery tickets are also worthy of attention.

According to “New Products Finance”, behind the hot sales of scratch-and-tear music, there is a contrasting multi-faceted nature, and there is also industry chaos worthy of attention.

First, looking at the overall trend and prospects of scratch music in 2025, different views have emerged in the market.

One view is that scratch sales are expected to be booming in 2025, and there is a high probability that there will be a shortage of goods again.

Another view is that it is expected that scratch music sales may increase to a certain extent in 2025, but the increase will not be too large, and it is unlikely to repeat the 100% increase in 2023, and it may not necessarily repeat the shortage of scratch music in 2024.

Second, lottery stores are accelerating their influx into popular places such as supermarkets, shopping centers, and scenic spots.

In the past, lottery tickets mostly appeared in the form of mom-and-pop stores, community stores, and street shops. Often one lottery store can support a family, but now more and more lottery stores are open. For example, the shortage of scratch tickets in 2024 will have a significant impact on offline small lottery stores.

In the past two or three years, especially in 2024, lottery stores have further accelerated their influx into supermarkets, shopping centers, scenic spots and other places. Many shopping centers have lottery stores, especially those in shopping centers with large passenger traffic. The business is very popular.

The introduction of lottery stores into supermarkets is an industry development trend. Behind this, it reflects the chain and enterprise-oriented operation of lottery stores. Relatively speaking, lottery stores of supermarkets have to invest more operating costs, but they have large passenger flow and can attract More consumers buy.

Third, behind the explosion of scratch tickets and the craze for lottery tickets, the polarization of lottery store business has become increasingly obvious.

Young people love to buy lottery tickets and scratch tickets. Lottery stores open into shopping malls. The business of lottery stores can be said to be getting more and more prosperous. The more lottery stores there are, the probability of profit may be greatly reduced.

Lottery store management is also a business in the surrounding business district. It is a business for regular customers. Now that more and more lottery stores are driving into Shangchao Li and driving to the subway entrance, they will inevitably take away part of the business of the original lottery stores in the surrounding area.

Opening lottery stores has become a popular offline business in recent years. The lottery business on the market has attracted many new entrants. For example, many frustrated and unemployed middle-aged people have entered the game to open lottery stores.

Lottery store profits are related to monthly sales. Not all lottery stores can make money, and even the polarization of lottery store profits is becoming increasingly obvious.

More and more lottery stores are opening, and only those people buy lottery tickets and scratch tickets. If you want to enter and open a lottery store, you must first do a good job in surrounding market research, customer flow analysis and competition analysis.

According to “New Products Finance”, there are also some market chaos worthy of attention behind the hot sales of scratch music. For example, in a shopping center, it was really surprising to find some children or students traveling together going to a lottery store to buy scratch tickets on weekends.

According to relevant regulations on lottery sales, minors under the age of 18 are prohibited from purchasing lottery tickets and redemption prizes. It is illegal for lottery stores to sell and redeem lottery tickets to minors.

When encountering minors such as children and students, and instead of accompanying adults to buy lottery tickets or scratch tickets, at this time, we have to rely on the self-discipline of lottery stores and the visits of relevant institutions to strengthen supervision and regulation.

The owner of a lottery shop told New Products Finance that it is expected that lottery scratch ticket sales in 2025 should be similar to 2024. All lottery shop operators expect to earn more money in 2025.