Korn pledges three THB1m lottery jackpots per province in lotto revamp
Chart Pattana Kla leader Korn Chatikavanij has vowed to create 231 jackpots of one million baht each at every government lottery draw if his party is elected to power. Unveiling Chart Pattana Kla’s policies on Sunday, former finance minister Korn said each province would be allotted three of the one-million-baht jackpots.
The 231 new jackpots would be funded by redirecting the 163 million baht in “marketing fees” that is currently paid to owners of ticket quotas sold via the Paotang app.
Korn said the Government Lottery Office (GLO) pays 9.6 baht for every one of the 17 million lottery tickets sold via the app, totalling 163 million baht in marketing fees.
He pointed out that the lottery tickets offered via Paotang app were actually sold by the GLO while the quota owners did nothing apart from booking their quota in time for each draw.
The policy is expected to meet with strong opposition from small-time lottery vendors. The GLO has been using the Paotang app to combat lottery overpricing while at the same time distributing ticket income to poor and small-time vendors.
Korn said the reason he had not launched this policy as finance minister in the Democrat-led government was that there were far fewer lottery tickets at each draw back then.
“Before 2014, only 37 million tickets were sold per draw and the sale generated less than one billion baht in profit. Now, thanks to technology and the Paotang app, about 100 million tickets are sold per draw, generating huge profits. So the GLO must return part of that profit to the more than 20 million lottery buyers.”
“We simply want the government to share a higher proportion of the profits with the people,” he said.
