A conventional lottery company in Ho Chi Minh City has reported a healthy performance in 2017, despite aggressive competition from an American-style computerized rival that offers significantly bigger prizes.

The Ho Chi Minh City Lottery Company saw its pre-tax profit surpass the VND1 trillion (US$43.65 million) mark for the first time last year, according to the company’s audited finance report.

The company, Vietnam’s largest traditional lottery firm, raked in VND6,600 billion ($290.4 million) from sales and services in 2017, a five-percent rise from 2016 and exceeding the full-year target by ten percent.

The firm’s pre-tax profit topped VND1,040 billion ($45.76 million), overshooting its target by 35 percent, whereas its post-tax profit stood at VND832 billion ($36.6 million).

General director Do Quang Vinh attributed the healthy business results to the company’s successful efforts to increase revenue and cut costs.

“This result is no surprise to [us] as it was well anticipated in our business plan,” Vinh said.

Traditional lottery companies in other provinces have also experienced a good year with high growth in revenue, Vinh added.

“This proves that traditional lottery still hasn’t lost its appeal to customers,” he concluded.

But it was also Vinh who admitted in December 2016 that the introduction of computerized lottery ‘Mega 6/45’ in July that year by the state-run Vietnam Computerized Lottery (Vietlott) would threaten traditional lottery companies in the country.

According to Mega 6/45 rules, players can make a combination of six numbers from 01 to 45, then wait for the random selection of a jackpot combination which is made every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.

The jackpot, starting at VND12 billion ($528,000), rolls over each week until there is a winner.

Players who have the ticket matching the draw will receive a Mega 6/45 jackpot prize and those with three, four, and five numbers matching the jackpot combination will be awarded far lower prizes.

This is much more attractive than the conventional lottery, where people can only buy tickets with preset numbers and the biggest cash prize is only VND2 billion ($87,300), excluding a ten-percent tax.

Despite this, Vietlott only reported a net profit of VND217 billion ($9.55 million) in 2017, too small in comparison with the business results of some traditional lottery companies in southern cities and provinces, including Ho Chi Minh City, Tien Giang, Tay Ninh and Vinh Long.

Vietlott managed to sell a whopping 1.6 billion tickets, raking in VND1,600 billion ($70.4 million), from its launch to the end of 2016.

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