China Arrests Dozens in World Cup Betting Crackdown as Police Hit Rings Across Four Provinces

Chinese police have arrested dozens of people accused of running illegal World Cup betting and promotion rings, opening a nationwide enforcement push that the Ministry of Public Security says will run through the tournament. The cybersecurity bureau coordinated raids across at least four provinces, mirroring the World Cup betting busts seen in Hong Kong a week earlier and the illegal sportsbook surge Indonesian authorities reported over the same period. All gambling is illegal in mainland China except the state-run welfare and sports lotteries, and the National Sports Lottery Center has authorized no online platform to sell tickets.

The arrests followed warnings that went unheeded. Earlier in June, courts and police told the public they could face jail or fines for betting on World Cup matches, and a senior judge urged people to "watch matches with a frame of rational mind" and to "refrain from participating in online sports betting, or acting as a betting intermediary." The Ministry of Public Security pushed video cautions through its Weibo account before kickoff. Then the raids started.

In Yulin, Guangxi, officers dismantled a "studio" that produced advertising for illegal sportsbooks. State broadcaster CCTV reported that two men, both surnamed Chen, and a woman surnamed Liu, all aged 25 to 26, masterminded the operation, which began in May and pushed a large volume of gambling promotions across multiple social platforms. The trio drove web traffic to undisclosed soccer betting sites and provided maintenance and technical support, police said. Several other Guangxi residents were arrested as the investigation continued.

In Xi'an, Shaanxi, a team of 20 officers monitored a suspected online sportsbook operator for 19 hours before raiding in the early hours of June 18. Seven people were arrested and reportedly gave full confessions. The site's turnover topped 100,000 yuan (about $14,770), with the group earning money on commissions, and police said they were moving to confiscate the profits. In Liaoyang, Liaoning, police cracked a case on the June 12 opening day in which a suspect accepted wagers on match outcomes and scores through illegal apps and paid out via WeChat; that individual was placed under administrative detention.

Platforms enlisted, accounts purged

The state has pressed China's social platforms into the campaign. Xiaohongshu, the Instagram-style discovery app, said it banned more than 40,000 accounts and removed over 65,000 gambling-related posts and 450,000 comments tied to illicit promotion in roughly two weeks. The platform ran 12 enforcement operations against organized traffic-diverting groups, cracked five of them, and handed 12 leads to public security in Guangxi, Beijing, Zhejiang and other regions. That cooperation is how cases like the Yulin studio surface: offshore sportsbooks cannot advertise to mainland punters directly, so they rent domestic promotion crews to seed links across WeChat, Xiaohongshu and short-video apps.

The sums named so far are small, and that is the point worth flagging. A 100,000 yuan turnover is a rounding error against the flow these campaigns chase. A Ministry of Public Security official has estimated that at least 1 trillion yuan (about $145.5 billion) leaves China each year through gambling, and the Asian Racing Federation and The Mekong Club estimate that of roughly $1.7 trillion in global illegal betting last year, at least half came from China. Domestic arrests of 25-year-old ad sellers are the visible edge of a market run from offshore.

Why the offshore layer matters for operators

That offshore layer is where the affiliate and B2B read sits. With all online betting banned at home, demand from Chinese punters has long been served from abroad, most visibly through the Philippine offshore gaming operators, or POGOs, that catered to mainland players where gambling is illegal. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered a total POGO ban in July 2024, with the regulator reporting more than 40 licensed operators and over 250 suspected unlicensed hubs at the time. PAGCOR later said all licensed POGOs were shut, while illegal networks persisted, much of that capacity migrating into Southeast Asian scam compounds. Any operator or affiliate touching this traffic is exposed to a multi-jurisdiction enforcement chain, not a single national ban.

The precedent points one way on penalties. China's football corruption and gambling campaign, launched in November 2022 and led by the Ministry of Public Security and the sports administration, dismantled 12 online gambling gangs and arrested 128 suspects across 41 clubs over more than 120 matches. By September 2024 it had produced 44 criminal and civil sanctions, 34 prison terms, and lifetime bans from the sport for 43 to 44 former players, referees, coaches and executives. China's Supreme People's Court has also endorsed heavier punishment for organizing cross-border gambling, typically 5 to 10 years, than for domestic equivalents, framing it as a driver of fraud, kidnapping and money laundering. The 2019 to 2022 "Operation Chain Break" campaign set that template. For the operators chasing Chinese World Cup money from offshore, the downside is criminal liability that scales with the size of the book, and confiscation of profits is already underway in Xi'an.