China's lottery could topple those of the United States and become the world's first hundred billion dollar lottery, according to China Center for Lottery Studies at Peking University.

It has the potential to grow more than tenfold from its current level of US$15 billion sales with more than 100 million players to one worth US$150 billion.

Wang Xuehong, executive director of the China Center for Lottery Studies and a senior research fellow, Ministry of Finance, said the China Lottery has huge potential for growth, if it could capture some of the illicit gaming market.

"The challenge has to be to win back the 300 billion yuan spent on illegal lottery games and that is where a lot of China's immediate lottery growth could come from," she said.

"This can be achieved by making a lot of the China lottery games more exciting and interesting to play. I think if this can be done then China's lottery could easily grow to a thousand billion yuan in a relatively short time frame."

If China's lottery was to grow to US$150 billion, it would be almost three times the size of that of the combined state lotteries of the United States, the world's largest lottery market, which generated sales of US$53.7 billion in 2007, according to US lottery games giant Scientific Games.

It would dwarf those of Italy with annual sales of US$21.1 billion, Spain with US$14.7 billion, France with US$13.7 billion and the United Kingdom with US$9.6 billion.

It would also be of equivalent size to the entire economic output of countries such as Egypt and New Zealand.

There has been speculation within the global lottery industry that the Chinese government could be set to issue a third major lottery license, its first in 15 years, to raise revenue for cultural and educational projects.

A new license would coincide with the drafting of China's first Lottery Act, which received the backing of the State Council last week.

Gary Newman, chairman and chief executive officer of Global Lottery Corporation (GLC), based in Las Vegas, Nevada, one of the world's leading lottery technology providers, said talk of a new license in China is currently the major talking point in the world's lottery industry.

"It will be dramatic. Rumors are all out there to lottery service providers that a third license has been issued and it is a national license, "he said.

"We have heard they (the Chinese government) want to go the cellular route. It would mean a person's cell phone would be a retail lottery terminal and it would open up big revenue streams for the government."

A government source, however, told China Daily there was no plans for a third license to be issued.