Gambling's old guard wants to curb online enthusiasm

The legacy bookmakers are furious about all the illegal online activity and want the government to crack down - to protect South Africans, of course

- By Lindsey Schutters

"I wish he had rather cheated on me with another woman," a victim of online gambling addiction, who would prefer to remain anonymous, told Daily Maverick.

To be clear, her spouse's undisclosed gambling losses, which are well over the R100,000 mark, were what caused the rift. They are married in community of property, which means she shares liability for his debts.

It is a story that is becoming increasingly familiar to South Africans, alongside revelations of students punting National Student Financial Aid Scheme money on bets. The country has a gambling problem that is not getting better.

If you have flown from any of Mzansi's airports, you already have a visual representation of how deep the pockets of these digital companies go.

So deep, in fact, that the original gambling industry is getting concerned. This concern has now escalated into what the South African Bookmakers' Association (Saba) is calling an "existential crisis", but not for the reasons you might think.

To the moon

Although the national gambling market is experiencing exponential growth, posting a healthy R1.14-trillion turnover in the 2023/24 financial year, the licensed, regulated local industry is feeling severely undermined. The culprit? Rampant, illegal, offshore online operators.

According to Saba CEO Sean Coleman, the core issue is that the "existential crisis lies in the scale and impact of illegal offshore operators that continue to target South African consumers unchecked".

Saba's research illustrates a lopsided battle. Illegal offshore operators are estimated to account for about 62% of all online gambling activity in South Africa, leaving local licensed operators with just 38%.

These illegal operators are "diverting over R50-billion in gross gambling revenue offshore annually".