Lawmakers from the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee yesterday asked the Sports Affairs Council (SAC) to quickly draw up a law specifically governing sports lotteries.
Taipei Fubon Bank is scheduled to begin the sports lotteries tomorrow. Currently, the government uses the Statute Governing Public Welfare Lotteries (公益彩券發行條例) as the legal basis for sports lotteries.
The statute dictates that profits from public welfare lotteries are to be used to fund welfare programs only, such as the National Pension Fund and the National Health Insurance system.
The council originally planned to amend the statute to allow 80 percent of the profits earned from sports lotteries to be used to fund sports. However, the proposed amendment was vetoed by the legislature’s Finance Committee on Monday.
On the same day, the Finance Committee also passed a resolution to postpone the sport lotteries because of an unresolved controversy over the appropriation of the earnings.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Nancy Chao (趙麗雲), a former SAC minister, said the sports lotteries were planned to help raise funds for the SAC, whose annual budget accounts for less than 0.4 percent of the government’s entire budget.
Chao said that 62 percent of the SAC budget is used to improve sports infrastructure, leaving only a small portion to pay for training athletes.
Chao also said that the sports lotteries were created to put an end to the betting scandals surrounding the nation’s professional baseball league.
However, Taipei Fubon Bank announced earlier that the nation’s professional baseball league would not be open for betting during the initial stage of the lotteries. Rather, the lotteries would mainly cover overseas baseball, basketball and soccer games, such as US Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and soccer leagues in England, Japan and other countries.
The nation’s Olympic baseball contests would be listed as a betting item in August, it said.
Chao said that although the sports lotteries were supposed to help the nation’s sports industry, not a single dollar would go to sports because of a lack of legislation.
Another KMT legislator, Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄), also said it was legitimate that profits from sports lotteries should be used to support the sports industry.
But he warned that a special law for sports lotteries might change terms of the agreement stated in the contract with Fubon.
“The government needs to handle the issue with care,” he said.
Huang also said Taiwan’s baseball league should be included as a betting item as soon as possible, or sports fans would simply pay attention to overseas sports games and disregard domestic sports.
A hundred sports lottery outlets are scheduled to open tomorrow.
While fans will only be allowed to buy lottery tickets from outlets during the initial stage, the bank plans to eventually allow buyers to purchase them online.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
RSS