Alibaba bets on lottery firm AGTech with $308m

"Alibaba's advantage in e-commerce, big data, online payment can certainly give the online sales of lottery a strong boost."

Annual lottery sales in China dropped 3.8 percent to 367.9 billion yuan ($56.47 billion) in 2015, in the wake of online lottery sales being banned, after 11 consecutive years of growth, according to statistics from the Ministry of Finance.

About 400 Internet companies were involved in online lottery sales in 2014, generating revenue of more than 85 billion yuan, accounting for 22 percent of total lottery income.

Min Jie, a Beijing resident, said he used to buy occasionally lottery tickets when shopping online on Alibaba's Taobao platform.

"I found it very convenient as I could automatically buy the same combination of numbers," said the 30-year-old, who spent at average 10 yuan a week.

"But when the service got suspended, I never bothered to buy lotteries at bricks-and-mortar stores," he said.

"The chances of hitting the jackpot is next to zero and it just didn't make sense to visit shops to wish for something that is almost impossible to win."