China’s official sports lottery continues to set new sales records during the 2018 FIFA World Cup, even as the authorities complain about rampant unapproved betting options.

According to China’s official government lottery portal, sports lottery sales over the first two weeks of the 2018 World Cup have hit RMB19.1b (US$3.9b), already eclipsing the total RMB12.9b recorded over the entire 2014 World Cup schedule. Projections are that total 2018 World Cup sales could exceed RMB50b ($7.5b), more than half of all sports lottery sales recorded in calendar 2017.

Li Gang, a lottery expert at Shanghai Normal University, told the Australian Financial Review that the increased betting was in part a reflection of the growing Chinese economy, but the rising popularity of social media was also spurring betting interest, thanks to users bragging about their successful betting picks on platforms such as WeChat.

Last month, shortly after the World Cup got underway, state-run media outlets warned Chinese social media platforms to purge themselves of unauthorized online sports lottery apps. Online lottery sales were “temporarily” suspended in March 2015 after some provincial lottery administrators were caught not reporting all their online sales.