500.com

500.com is a Chinese online sports lottery service provider that aggregates and processes lottery purchase orders. It derives nearly all of its revenue from service fees paid by local sports lottery administration centers for the purchase orders of sports lottery products directed to such centers. By taking the lead in setting the industrystandards, 500.com has created a unique business model for online lottery sales, having captured the second largest market share in the country for 2012 and the largest market share in the country in the first half of 2013 in terms of purchase amounts of sports lottery products. The company offers a comprehensive and integrated suite of online lottery services, information, user tools, and virtual community venues to its users. Its lottery sales services include individual lottery purchase, lottery pool purchase, automatic tag-along purchase, recurring purchase, and locked-in lottery number purchase services. It is planning to extend its business to insurance purchase, ticket booking, and online games. 500.com was among the first companies to provide online lottery services in China, and is one of two entities that have been approved by the Ministry of Finance to provide online lottery sales services on behalf of the China Sports Lottery Administration Center, which is the government authority in charge of the issuance and sale of sports lottery products in China. As of September 30, 2013, it had 18.4 million total registered accounts. 500.com was founded in October 2001 in Shenzhen as 500wan.com Ltd., with a registered capital of RMB 50 million. The company secured venture capital investments of several million U.S. dollars from IDG Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital, and SIG Capital in September 2007. It changed its name to 500.com in October 2013 and went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol WBAI on November 22, 2013. 500.com competes with lottery.gov.cn, and zhcw.com.