Almost $7bn (£5.33bn) was wagered in China’s state sports lottery during the recent World Cup tournament. This staggering figure shows how popular this form of sports betting is in the country, where it is the only legal way for residents to bet on sporting events.

Gambling is constantly becoming more and more popular in China, despite strict laws governing it. Authorities have staged a number of high-profile operations to shut down unauthorized gambling operators but a lot of them are still slipping through the net.

Meanwhile, the state-run sports lottery has smashed past all previous records for money taken in during the recent World Cup period. The compiled sales during the duration of the tournament reached $6.9bn (£5.25bn), which is almost four times as much as was bet during the 2014 tournament. This is certainly an astonishing sum that the government will be pleased about.

Of course, this is the total revenue and not the level of profit that the government generated. The government stated that about $5bn (£3.81bn) was paid out to winners, with the government retaining about $410m (£312m) for its own purposes. Most of that money went to social welfare programs.

The individual one-day record for funds raised through the sport’s lottery history was in advance of the final between Croatia and France, where $410m (£312m) was wagered. The highest single day during the 2014 tournament brought in just rmb874m ($128.6m; £98.2m).

On average during this year’s World Cup, $210m (£160m) a day was wagered, which is equivalent to the total revenues per week in advance of the tournament. Online lottery sales were allowed in 2014 but are no longer permitted, which makes this year’s performance even more impressive.

There was a temporary suspension of online sales in 2015. That was done because audits show that provincial lottery administrators had not been accurately reporting all of the online sales to the central government.