Lottery trumps casinos for revenue
The majority of betting dollars in Singapore are spent on the national lottery. According to a report conducted by CIMB Research, the state lottery, Singapore Pools, took in $6.34 billion of the combined $7.89 billion in gross gaming revenue generated by betting outside the country’s two casinos last year.
Singapore Pools offers games such as 4-D, Toto, Singapore Sweep, as well as betting on soccer matches and motor races, and the Singapore Turf Club runs the horse racing concession. Both are agents of the Tote Board, a statutory board under the Finance Ministry, according to the Straits Times.
Horse racing seems to have suffered most from the competition from the country’s casinos, which opened in 2010. The Turf Club’s turnover fell from $2.1 billion in the financial year ended March 2010 to $1.55 billion in the year ended last March, reported the Times.
Though online gambling is illegal in Singapore?the government passed a law last October that prohibits gambling on unlicensed websites and is now working to block those sites?consultants says online betting accounted for at least half a billion dollars in Singapore in 2013.
Gamblers told the Times that new sites have cropped up to replace those blocked by the government. Some are also using Virtual Private Network services to bypass the blocks.
On a per capita basis, every person in Singapore spent almost US $1,300 (US $1,760) on gambling in 2012, second only to Macau’s whopping US $68,500, reported Britain’s Global Betting and Gaming Consultancy. Australia came in third at almost US $1,000 per person. But a spokesman from the National Council on Problem Gambling said, “The majority of Singaporeans do not have issues with problem gambling.”
