A revised bill to introduce a soccer lottery system to raise funds to promote sports activities was approved Friday by a Lower House panel, bringing the lucrative but controversial legislation one step closer to enactment.

The Lower House Steering Committee decided later in the day to vote on a soccer pools bill at a plenary session of the House of Representatives next Tuesday, so that the bill can lead to launching soccer pools in Japan in 2000.

The bill envisages pools in which winners are determined by predicting match results for J. League professional soccer matches.

In a rare move in the morning, the Liberal Democratic Party removed Makiko Tanaka, an LDP Lower House member, from the post of director of the Lower House Committee on Education, because she had voiced opposition to the bill.

In the vote by the panel, members mainly from the LDP and the Liberal Party supported the bill. Members from the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party, and some members of the Democratic Party of Japan and Shinto Heiwa (New Peace Party) opposed it.

The opponents have claimed that betting on J. League soccer matches could negatively influence youth. The bill, proposed by a nonpartisan group of lawmakers to obtain public funds to promote sports through a lottery system, is expected to clear the Diet next Tuesday at the earliest.

If passed, sales of 100 yen lottery tickets would be allowed on J. League matches starting in 2000. The maximum winning is estimated to be more than 100 million yen. The probability of winning the maximum would be about one in 1.6 million, according to the lawmakers proposing the bill. They have estimated that ticket sales will hit 180 billion yen a year.

People under 19 would be prohibited from purchasing lottery tickets under the bill. Although the bill does not say where the lottery tickets would be sold, the legislators who proposed the bill said during a committee session that they may be sold at banks, convenience stores and at other stores.

Under the bill, 50 percent of ticket revenues will go to prizes, 15 percent will be used for operating the pools, and the remaining 35 percent will constitute profit for sports groups and the state.

Ousted panel member Tanaka, daughter of the late Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, stressed that there would be no need to give the education minister the right to halt betting if, as proponents claim, the lottery helped the sound growth of youth through sports activities. "Sports activities should be funded by public money. I'm strongly afraid that the lottery system will ruin the current favorable environment surrounding the J. League and its supporters," Tanaka told reporters after the voting.

She went on to say that some of her LDP colleagues are also opposed to the bill, but they cannot express their opinions because the bill represents a party decision.