Betting on losing streak

GAMBLING: THOUSANDS OF ILLEGAL OPERATORS TARGET SOUTH AFRICANS >>> Offering multiple payment options while paying no tax.

- Ciaran Ryan

The online gambling industry finds itself in a PR storm, fending off calls to ban it outright or at least subject it to the same advertising restrictions applied to cigarettes.

At a presentation this week, Sean Coleman, head of the SA Bookmakers' Association, pointed to research by Yield Sec showing an even bigger problem: illegal gambling, which accounts for about 62% of the total market.

Some 16 million South Africans, or 27% of the population, are reckoned to engage with illegal gaming sites.

Illegal betting is defined as bets placed in a jurisdiction where the operator is not licensed, for example, a South African placing a bet on a website in the Caribbean, where regulations are weak.

"Offshore pseudo-gambling regulators are not part of a national regulatory structure and hence have no relation to national laws of any jurisdiction except that in which they sit," said Coleman, whose organisation represents more than 100 bookmakers.

There are more than 2 000 illegal online gambling operators targeting South Africa, with 1 134 affiliates promoting these sites.

Affiliates are usually clickbait sites intended to draw traffic to the illegal sites, many of which are located in thinly populated jurisdictions such as the Caribbean island of Curaçao, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man or Malta. The Philippines is also home to many of these betting sites.

One Philippine-based gaming platform, Dafabet, is a primary sponsor of SA's Proteas cricket team.

Legal v illegal

Coleman called for better consumer education to help South Africans differentiate between legal and illegal gambling platforms.

The illegal sites are purely extractive, offering South Africans multiple payment options to place bets. They pay no tax and generate no employment or social betterment in SA.