CLAIMS TO FAME
- Career banker with lottery-owner Chinatrust Commercial Bank
The year 2025 will be the first full calendar year that Taiwan Lottery Co chairman Huang Chih-yi has been in charge – and it promises to restore balance after a rocky revenue experience in the second half of 2024.
Ticket sales for the “Welfare Lottery” fell 18.7% in 2024, delivering NT$132.1 billion (US$4.3 billion) in sales and almost a NT$29.2 billion (US$953 million) “surplus” of funds distributed to social services and the needy.
The fall in sales almost mirrored the previous year’s jump, but the better news is that 2025 is likely to result in two-thirds of that loss being recovered.
Oddly enough, the government was not too concerned about the drop in revenue, insisting instead that the eventual 2024 numbers beat projections by a few percentage points, hinting at over-performance in 2023.
Even so, Huang has started his position as chair with some challenges to overcome, not least the perception that the Welfare Lottery is well behind the Sports Lottery in terms of annual growth, albeit from a much higher base, and conscious that the FIFA World Cup in 2026 will likely steal the Welfare Lottery’s thunder for several months at least.
At the same time, Huang has considerable experience as a director with the lottery, and is likely to continue with his popular touch and long experience with Taiwan’s financial sector to shore up Taiwan’s largest legal gambling entity.
