The Taiwan Sports Lottery is issued based on the Public Welfare Lottery Issue Act (公益彩券發行條例).
The selection of retailers, prize payout ratio and the use of net revenues must be in accordance with the act, and this has caused operational problems that must be resolved.
A look at foreign sports lotteries shows that retailers selling lottery tickets are mostly related to the sports field and have a thorough understanding of sports.
This has an effect on the promotion of lottery ticket sales.
Looking back at Taiwan, the operator of the sports lottery must obey Article 8 of the lottery act by selecting “handicapped people who are capable of working, Aborigines and single-parent, low-income families” as retailers.
Because of these restrictions, the expertise of retailers is not very closely related to sports.
The result is that there is still much room for improving ticket sales.
Article 5 of the lottery act states: “The prize payout ratio of the lottery shall not exceed 75 percent of the total amount of lottery issued unless otherwise approved by the authorities in charge.”
The 75 percent ceiling restricts the setting of odds and causes operators to avoid such restrictions indirectly by launching “combination bets” in order to increase prize money.
Foreign sports betting Web sites or local illegal underground bookies pay out almost 90 percent. This means that they offer better odds than the sports lottery.
GAMBLERS
Obviously, such high ratios are much more attractive to gamblers. If one of the government’s purposes of issuing the sports lottery is to combat illegal underground gambling, it may be difficult to achieve that goal when the prize payout ratio is restricted like this.
Finally, the biggest problem created by the act concerns the use of profits.
Article 6 of the lottery act states: “All lottery revenues shall be used by the government only for the national pension system, the national health insurance program’s safety reserve and other social welfare expenses other than social welfare expenses that have been allocated and granted according to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法).”
Thus all the revenue from the sports lottery goes to social welfare and nothing is fed to the sports sector.
Even though the operator paid the government almost NT$700 million (US$20.5 million) last year and will pay over NT$1 billion this year, neither baseball nor other sports will benefit from the money.
CONTRADICTION
This clearly contradicts the original purpose of the sports lottery, as it fails to interact constructively with the nation’s sports industry, and that is a shame.
At a time when we are discussing the defeat of the Taiwanese team at the World Baseball Classic tournament in Tokyo, I call on President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his administration to propose an exclusive sports lottery act and for the legislature to pass it.
Hopefully, the sports lottery would be able to attract social resources for sports development and maybe even allocate funds specifically for baseball.
By doing so, perhaps Taiwan’s team can make a breakthrough and reach the top again.
Chen Yue-hsin is vice chairman of the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry gives it a strategic advantage, but that advantage would be threatened as the US seeks to end Taiwan’s monopoly in the industry and as China grows more assertive, analysts said at a security dialogue last week. While the semiconductor industry is Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” its dominance has been seen by some in the US as “a monopoly,” South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University academic Kwon Seok-joon said at an event held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In addition, Taiwan lacks sufficient energy sources and is vulnerable to natural disasters and geopolitical threats from China, he said.
After reading the article by Hideki Nagayama [English version on same page] published in the Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) on Wednesday, I decided to write this article in hopes of ever so slightly easing my depression. In August, I visited the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan, to attend a seminar. While there, I had the chance to look at the museum’s collections. I felt extreme annoyance at seeing that the museum had classified Taiwanese indigenous peoples as part of China’s ethnic minorities. I kept thinking about how I could make this known, but after returning
What value does the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hold in Taiwan? One might say that it is to defend — or at the very least, maintain — truly “blue” qualities. To be truly “blue” — without impurities, rejecting any “red” influence — is to uphold the ideology consistent with that on which the Republic of China (ROC) was established. The KMT would likely not object to this notion. However, if the current generation of KMT political elites do not understand what it means to be “blue” — or even light blue — their knowledge and bravery are far too lacking
Taipei’s population is estimated to drop below 2.5 million by the end of this month — the only city among the nation’s six special municipalities that has more people moving out than moving in this year. A city that is classified as a special municipality can have three deputy mayors if it has a population of more than 2.5 million people, Article 55 of the Local Government Act (地方制度法) states. To counter the capital’s shrinking population, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) held a cross-departmental population policy committee meeting on Wednesday last week to discuss possible solutions. According to Taipei City Government data, Taipei’s