China’s Sports Lottery Draws Fire for Bizarre Winning Numbers
Xenia Luch
23 January 2024
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The China Sports Lottery had some explaining to do after a controversial drawing on January 17. Players accused the lottery of deception after seeing very rare winning number combinations.
In one of the drawing sets, the numbers ‘555’ and ‘55555’ came up. To win a prize, players had to guess all three or five numbers, respectively. For the five-digit combination, they also had to get the order right (and get a bigger prize for doing so).

Players were even more suspicious because there were more winners than usual who got the ‘55555’ combination right.
Nearly 6000 people hit the jackpot with ‘55555’, so they had to split the grand prize among themselves. Each winner got 84,034 yuan ($11,800).
Chinese citizens wondered why anyone would bet on such a weird set of numbers. They suspected the lottery organizers of fraud, although some players tried to rationalize the phenomenon as a technical glitch during the drawing.
The next day, the sports lottery customer support denied any wrongdoing and said the numbers were randomly generated, as always. Lottery officials said that unusual winning combinations, though uncommon, do happen, and this was not the first time in history.