The long-awaited sports lotteries were officially launched yesterday, with 148 retail stores nationwide opening simultaneously for sales at 10am.
Taipei Fubon Bank is in charge of issuing the sports lotteries. The bank’s chairman Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) said in a press conference at the Sports Affairs Council (SAC) yesterday that the bank plans to increase the number of retail stores to about 1,000 within two months.
While the lotteries are currently only available at stores, Fubon has plans to sell the tickets online.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
Aside from the Internet, Tsai said that customers would eventually be able to place their bets via a dial-in service, mobile phones, Chunghwa Telecom’s multimedia-on-demand service and digital cable television service.
Richard Yang (楊瑞東), the bank’s vice president, said that it plans to list Chinese Professional Baseball League games as one of the betting items by the end of August.
As the nation will also compete in the baseball and basketball at the Beijing Olympic Games, events in both categories will become betting items in August as well, he said.
Yang further said that the bank’s contract with the Ministry of Finance dictated that it generate a total revenue of NT$190.1 billion in six years.
“We aim to achieve NT$10.7 billion in the first year of operations,” he said, adding that the public needed to be educated about the rules of the game.
Games that people can bet on include Major League Baseball, the National Baseball Association and soccer leagues in Europe and Japan.
The bank has listed six betting options, including “handicap,” “hi-lo,” “winning margin,” “home-away-draw,” “correct score” and “championship.”
The first three options can be used when a person bets on baseball or basketball games, whereas the last three can be used when placing bets on soccer games.
A better could choose “handicap” when a historically strong team is playing against a historically weak team. In general, the option equalizes the chances of winning for both teams by scoring compensation.
“Hi-lo” refers to an option where the bookmaker estimates the total score of both teams. Gamblers could then bet whether the outcome exceeds or falls short of the estimated total. To bet on the winning margin, one could bet that a team will defeat another by a certain number of points.
A person could bet on one single game at a time, or bet on two to six games at a time. For the latter, betters lose if any of the games they bet on don’t match their predictions.
However, if all results match the better’s predictions, his prize increases by multiplying the odds for each game.
Taiwanese New York Yankees starter Wang Chien-ming (王建民) is scheduled to play in a match against the Seattle Mariners today, and the bank has set odds for the game.
Yang said that given the Yankees have a few batters on the injury list, the bank estimated the odds of a Yankees win at 9-5.
Head of the SAC Julien Kuo (郭正亮) said that the sports lottery will increase public attention toward domestic and foreign sports events, but urged the legislature to draw up new laws.
“Without independent regulation, the sports lottery cannot focus on promoting sports,” he said, adding that the profits from lottery sales should be used to support sports activities.
The current statute governing the issuance of public welfare lotteries stipulates that gains from lottery issuance can only be appropriated for social welfare.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS