Vietnam’s State Lottery Just Had Its Biggest Year – The Numbers Are Staggering

Key Points

• Vietnam’s lottery revenue was $6.8B in 2025, which saw a 10.5% increase year-on-year, with total spending amounting to $52.7B from 2013 to 2025, as per the Finance Ministry.
• The south contributed 87.8% to total lottery revenues in 2025, while the north contributed only 2.2%.
• Expert Market Research has forecasted that the market would see revenues of $17B by 2035, although such estimates come with several caveats about regulation and digitalisation.

The revenue raised by the state-owned lotteries in Vietnam rose to VND 177.2 trillion ($6.8 billion) in 2025, marking a 10.5% increase compared to the previous year, according to a report from the Finance Ministry published on 24 September 2026. In terms of per capita, the revenue of around $66 per person can be estimated based on the population of 102.3 million people in Vietnam.

When considering the 13-year period, it is even more impressive. Between 2013 and 2025, Vietnamese households spent VND1.37 quadrillion (52.7billion) on lotteries at the average annual growth rate of 10.2%. Such long-term growth brought another result as well: VND 439 trillion (16.7 billion) entered the state budget over 13 years, of which VND57 trillion ($2.2 billion) was raised in 2025. This money by law must be transferred to the budgets of local regions for healthcare, education, and social services.

The Vietnam lottery market is operated by 63 companies that are owned by the State and have a link with one of the former provinces in Vietnam, along with Vietlott, an official company operated by the Finance Ministry. All the legal operations of the lottery in the country are fully controlled by the State, while no private companies are allowed to engage in the lottery.

The South Generated 87.8% of 2025 Revenue – That Gap Is Getting Harder to Ignore

The regional concentration within Vietnam’s 2025 lottery figures is remarkable. The southern region alone generated 87.8% of total lottery revenue for that year. The central region contributed 4.6%. The north accounted for just 2.2%, with Vietlott’s nationwide computerised products covering the remaining share.

This is a 2025 revenue split, not a measure of the full 13-year cumulative total. The Finance Ministry did not publish a regional breakdown for the entire 2013-2025 period in this report; the 87.8% figure applies specifically to last year’s revenue.

What the ministry did confirm is that the gap between regions and product types is widening. Regulators have responded by capping ticket sales per individual draw to keep market growth in check, a constraint that reflects the uneven demand profile rather than a plan to slow the industry nationally.

This is evident when one delves deeper into the numbers of specific companies. In total, the 21 lottery companies running in the southern area have total revenues of VND75,877 billion as at the half-year of 2025. This is 9.09% higher compared to 2024. The highest company amongst all is Ho Chi Minh City Lottery Company Limited whose revenues amount to VND7,027 billion. This is a 10.93% increase from the preceding year. In the initial part of 2026, all the lottery companies in the southern region sold 100% of the tickets issued, and out of the 21 companies, 17 sold through their tickets at 100% in 2025.

The agent network underpinning this market is also significant. Around 500,000 people earn income through the lottery ticket distribution system, including low-income individuals and beneficiaries of social support programmes, according to the Finance Ministry.

Vietlott’s 2025 Performance and What It Reveals About Where the Market Is Heading

Vietlott’s 2025 results show what happens when a digital lottery product with nationwide reach operates in a market already primed for growth. The company posted VND9,686 billion in revenue, up 22% from 2024 and 11% above its Finance Ministry-set target. It paid out VND5,342 billion in prizes across more than 32 million winning tickets, a 25% increase in prize payouts from 2024.

Growth through the mobile channel of Vietlott can be observed. Vietlott’s SMS service already had over 3.7 million active accounts by the end of 2025 after registering an increase of nearly 1.2 million accounts during the year. The service currently integrates with over 30 wallets and banking apps. Vietlott’s income since its launch in 2016 has increased by more than six times with total income of nearly VND58,000 billion by May 2026 while contributing nearly VND16,000 billion to the state budget.

The Illegal Market That Persists Alongside All of This

Official lottery growth exists alongside a persistent illegal gambling economy. Số đề, an illegal betting game based on the final digits of official state lottery results, has deep roots in Vietnamese society and is linked directly to the very products the state runs legally. Officials have attributed some reduction in illegal number-betting activity to the expansion of computerised lottery products, though the claim is narrower than it might appear: the Finance Ministry’s own position, as reported by VnExpress, is that computerised lotteries helped curb some illegal betting based on official lottery results. That is a meaningful distinction from claiming the problem has been structurally addressed.

The broader picture is more complicated. Vietnamese authorities dismantled a cross-border online gambling ring linked to foreign-hosted platforms as recently as May 2025, and conducted a series of World Cup crackdowns in June 2026 that dismantled networks processing over VND1 trillion in illegal lottery and betting transactions in southern Vietnam alone. Online casino activity remains broadly prohibited for Vietnamese citizens, while tightly controlled licensed betting on horse racing and international football exists under Decree 06/2017 with strict daily caps and a very limited number of licensed operators.

Expert Analysis: Vietnam’s Lottery Revenue Is Real – The Strategy Behind It Deserves More Scrutiny

We do not think the official framing tells the full story here, and we are not sure the market does either.

Consider what the regional split actually means. A legal lottery industry in which one region produces 87.8% of a single year’s revenue is not functioning as a national market. It is a southern market operating under a national structure. The Ministry acknowledges the widening gap but has not outlined how it plans to close it, or whether closing it is even a goal. That ambiguity matters, because the social-welfare argument for a state-controlled lottery system is harder to sustain when the fiscal benefits are this geographically concentrated.

The $17B market value estimation for the period 2026-2035 based on a CAGR of 9.2%, according to Expert Market Research, presumes the continuity of the digital process and continued revenue performance. The $6.8B Finance Ministry’s estimate for 2025 and the $7.05B 2025 market size estimation of Expert Market Research have no direct comparability due to the different approaches applied.

And those questions sit squarely on the regulatory side. The Finance Ministry has been working on lottery-specific regulation to address digital formats, but no comprehensive dedicated digital lottery framework has been enacted. The Vietnam Ministry of Finance has proposed developing a dedicated law covering casinos, sports betting, and lotteries to replace the current patchwork of decrees, acknowledging openly that the existing framework needs to adapt to digital realities. In a market growing at 10.2% annually with smartphone penetration rising and mobile lottery accounts multiplying, the gap between digital participation and digital regulation is not a minor administrative gap. It is the primary risk to how cleanly this growth story continues.