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No matter where you are in the world, from South Africa to the US and the UK, there are rules and regulations to follow when it comes to gambling. Some places have a narrower scope of what constitutes legal gambling and how it can be done, than others.
The rise of online gambling, despite going strong for more than two decades, has tended to cause a lot of confusion across the board for gamblers. Not all laws and regulations from countries even cover the topic specifically, leaving a lot of grey areas for players. The last thing that players want is any ambiguity about what they can and can’t do. Instead they want a calm, stress-free approach to gambling.
South Africa’s approach to casino gambling is laid out by the National Gambling Act 7 2004. It dedicates what is permissible within the country, but how exactly does it affect casino players?
South Africa’s Gambling Scene
It is worth looking at the size of South Africa’s gambling industry first. Numbers from 2024 revealed that the industry is worth around R1.1 million per year, up by roughly a quarter from the previous year’s output.
So, growth continues to be rapid and projections for the future predict further strong growth. A legalized gambling scene creates extra income for the economy through gambling taxes, and can massively boost the job outlook as well.
The National Gambling Act 7 of 2004 set out to repeal the previous National Gambling Act of 1996. The main purpose of it was to establish standards for both provincial and national regulation over certain gambling activities.
There was an amendment put forth in 2008 which introduced new definitions and amended others. It also moved to regulate interactive gambling which has been stuck in a completely grey area. Interactive gambling is online remote games of chance which don’t involve skill.
For further information about gambling in South Africa, the knowledgeable and informative website askgamblers.com goes into further detail. Being a review site, they look at gambling options that players have open to them from reputable sites, and also list details of bonus and payment information. The site covers South Africa, along with numerous other countries from Australia to Germany and Ireland to Malaysia and is a rich source of gambling data by locale.
In Person Casino
Players in South Africa can access casinos in person, this is nothing new. According to the National Gambling Board, as of March 2024, there were 37 operating licences granted within the country. Gauteng is the province that holds the most.
There are more than 21,000 slot machines in operation in South Africa, and Gauteng has 36.9% of those. For tables, there are 911 of them in the country and again, Gauteng tops the charts with 36.8% of them, while Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal both have more than 15%.
Casinos in South Africa have to have a mix of limited pay-out machines, and table games and can include bingo as well. These are licensed and established places for people to play, and across the 2003/2004 financial year, the casino industry generated R17.4 billion of gross gaming revenue (GGR).
Online Casino Gambling
The confusion for a lot of players is that the same provisions haven’t been made for online casino gambling. Worldwide it is an enormous industry, but it is not recognised by the National Gambling Act which means that the only forms of legal betting in South Africa is sports, including horse racing.
Online casinos are not part of the picture, and this has the biggest impact on players in the country. Unlike the more open markets in the USA, UK and Australia, three of the biggest online casino markets in the world, South Africa is left behind in terms of remote casino games.
Besides sports and horse racing betting, in-person bingo is also legal in South Africa and that covers both electronic terminals and regular paper cards. Bingo is quite heavily regulated, however, because it’s limited by things like how many people can participate in a bingo hall session.
Lottery is the other form of gambling that can happen legally through bookmaker sites. For more than 20 years that has been happening, and during that span, more and more lottery products have appeared, which the National Lottery operator has seen as competition to its monopoly.
Moving Forward
There was a Remote Gambling Bill introduced to Parliament in 2024. The goal of this bill is to regulate interactive gambling and introduce norms and standards. So the path to inclusion for South African gamblers could be coming. However, legislation is often very slow to move forward, highlighted by the National Gambling Amendment Act, of 2008 which has stagnated since it was brought up.
So online gambling at casinos remains off the page for players at the moment. This is because of the current rules surrounding interactive games that can only be accessed over the Internet. As they are games of chance, they are excluded from the concept of online gambling. Sports betting, in contrast, is dependent on the skill of the bettor, which is why it is legal.
Impactful Solutions
But there is a solution for players who turn to off-shore online casino platforms, ideally regulated by a world-leading body such as the Malta Gaming Authority or the UK Gambling Commission. This ease of accessing gambling means that off-shore gambling is a common occurrence in places where online casinos are not licensed and regulated. Restrictions can be worked around.
This isn’t the most ideal situation for everyone, however. Players become at risk of stumbling across unlicensed and unregulated platforms, which means that they are not going to have any recourse of action should the casino suddenly shut down, or refuse to pay out, for example.
This isn’t the ideal scenario for the government, either. When players in South Africa spend at off-shore online casinos, that is money heading out of the country. Not having a regulated online casino scene means that South Africa is missing out on another sizable boost to the economy.
In Conclusion
Everyone is impacted by the gambling rules that they operate under in their country. South Africa is no different and legislative hold-ups are a frustrating thing for players to have to deal with. But at least the country is looking in the right direction, of pulling together the framework for legalized online casino play to happen in the country.
