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Gambling in Kenya Statistics 2026: The Rail Beats the Rate

KSh 330.5 billion. That is what flowed into Kenyan betting wallets in the twelve months to June 2026, and it was reported as a 275% jump. Almost none of that leap is new gambling, and 275% is not even the right arithmetic. Kenya cut its betting excise from 15% to 5% and moved the point of collection onto the mobile-money rail; the rate fell by two thirds and the base the taxman could see more than tripled. That is the finding this page is built on: in Kenya, the collection point mattered far more than the rate. The rail beats the rate.

How much money went into Kenyan betting in 2026?

KSh 330.5 billion passed into betting wallets in the year to June 2026 — but that figure is deposits, not stakes, and it is not comparable to the KSh 88.2 billion it is usually printed beside. The number is not a survey or a market study. It is arithmetic on a tax receipt: the Kenya Revenue Authority collected KSh 16.527 billion of betting excise duty at a statutory rate of 5%, and 16.527 divided by 0.05 is 330.5.

That method is sound. What breaks is the comparison. Until 30 June 2025, Kenyan betting excise was charged on the amount wagered or staked. From 1 July 2025 it is charged on the amount deposited into a customer’s betting wallet. Those are two different quantities measured at two different points in the money’s journey, and a stake can be made several times over from one deposit as winnings recycle. Putting KSh 330.5 billion of deposits next to KSh 88.2 billion of stakes and calling it 275% growth compares a river to a reservoir. (Correct the prior-year figure to KSh 96.1 billion, as we do below, and even the arithmetic of the headline changes: the like-for-like jump would be 244%. It is still the wrong sum.)

There is a second, smaller error worth correcting while we are here. The KSh 88.2 billion prior-year figure is itself derived, by dividing FY2024/25 excise of KSh 13.23 billion by 15%. But 15% only applied from 27 December 2024. For the first 179 days of that fiscal year the rate was 12.5%. Weight the two and the effective rate was 13.77%, which puts the declared stake base at KSh 96.1 billion — 8.9% higher than the published figure.

16Best analysis of KRA collection data. FY2021/22 excise is back-derived from KRA’s statement that FY2022/23 collections grew 30.0% year on year. The FY2024/25 blended rate weights 12.5% across 179 days and 15% across 186 days. The final row is not continuous with the rows above it: the statutory base changed from stakes to deposits on 1 July 2025.

Why did Kenyan betting scale on M-Pesa instead of betting shops?

Because Kenya had a national payment rail before it had a betting industry, and that rail moved KSh 41.68 trillion in the year to March 2026 — 2.4 times the country’s entire annual GDP. Safaricom reported 46.4 billion M-Pesa transactions in FY2026, up 25.1%, from 40.99 million 30-day active users. Divide the value by the count and the average M-Pesa transaction is KSh 898 — under US$7. This is a rail built for small money, and small money is what betting runs on.

Set the two totals side by side and the proportion is modest: KSh 330.5 billion of betting deposits is 0.79% of M-Pesa’s FY2026 throughput. Betting is a rounding error on the rail. The rail is the entire reason betting exists at this scale. The Gambling Control Act 2025 sets the minimum online stake at KSh 20 — about 15 US cents at the 2025 average rate of KSh 129.29 to the dollar. No product built around a cashier’s window can price a transaction that low. A product settled by mobile wallet can, and does, roughly ten thousand shillings’ worth every second of the year.

Safaricom PLC FY2026 results (year ended 31 March 2026); KNBS Economic Survey 2026 for 2025 nominal GDP of KSh 17.58 trillion. The GDP multiple sets a March-year flow against a calendar-year output figure, so read it as an order of magnitude rather than a precise ratio. M-Pesa is one operator’s rail, not all Kenyan mobile money.

What did Kenya’s 2019 tax war actually do to the market?

It cut turnover by four-fifths but revenue by less than half — and the instrument that acted first was not the tax, it was the withdrawal of the paybill numbers. This is the closest thing gambling policy has to a controlled experiment, and it has been misread in both directions ever since.

The sequence matters, so here it is in order. The Finance Act 2017 had imposed a uniform 35% tax on gross gaming revenue; the Finance Act 2018 cut that back to 15% and introduced a 20% withholding tax on winnings. In July 2019 the Betting Control and Licensing Board declined to renew licences for 27 operators over unresolved tax compliance, and the state directed the mobile operators to withdraw their paybill numbers and SMS short codes — which meant Kenyan customers could no longer deposit. On 25 September 2019 MPs voted through a 20% excise duty on the amount staked. Betin suspended Kenyan operations on 27 September; SportPesa — which a 2018 GeoPoll survey of 1,300 Kenyans found was used by 82% of bettors — announced suspension the following day, placing 453 employees on leave. The excise itself only commenced on 7 November 2019.

Read that order carefully, because the usual telling collapses it. Both operators publicly blamed the 20% stake tax, and the parliamentary vote two days before their announcements clearly triggered the timing. But their customers had already been unable to fund an account for roughly two months by then, and the duty they cited did not commence for another six weeks. The tax supplied the reason; the rail supplied the mechanism. Kenya’s state learned in 2019 what its treasury re-learned in 2025 — whoever controls the mobile-money rail controls the industry, and the rate is the secondary instrument.

Turnover, payouts and GGR as reported by Business Daily from regulator returns. Hold rate and dollar conversions are ours: World Bank official period-average rates of KSh 101.99 per US$ (2019) and KSh 117.87 (2022). Both fiscal years run July to June; the dollar figures use calendar-year averages, so treat them as close approximations.

What happened while the tax rate kept rising, 2021 to 2024?

Collections nearly doubled and the declared market barely moved — because the rate rose 84% and the base rose 8.5%. The Finance Act 2020 repealed the 20% excise entirely. SportPesa returned on 30 October 2020 under a licence held by Milestone Games, survived an immediate BCLB suspension and won reinstatement in the High Court. The Finance Act 2021 reintroduced excise at 7.5% of the amount staked; the Finance Act 2023 raised it to 12.5%; the Tax Laws (Amendment) Act 2024, assented on 11 December 2024, took it to 15% from 27 December.

Now decompose what the treasury actually earned from that. Between FY2022/23 and FY2024/25 betting excise collections rose 99.2%, from KSh 6.64 billion to KSh 13.23 billion. Over the same two years the effective rate rose 83.6% and the declared base rose 8.5%. Multiply those two — 1.836 × 1.085 — and you get 1.992, the collections growth almost exactly. On a log decomposition, 88.2% of the extra revenue came from the rate and 11.8% from the market.

Put plainly: for three years Kenya raised more money from gambling without the taxable market growing. That is not a booming industry being milked. It is a static declared base being squeezed harder — and a squeezed base is exactly the condition under which volume quietly leaves for platforms that do not file returns.

Why did cutting the rate to 5% collect more money?

Because Parliament moved the tollbooth. The Finance Act 2025 cut betting excise from 15% to 5% effective 1 July 2025 and shifted the charge from the stake to the money leaving a mobile-money wallet — and collections rose 24.9% to a record KSh 16.53 billion. The finance committee chair, Kimani Kuria, described the mechanism without euphemism: duty is now captured every time a Kenyan transfers money from their mobile wallet to a betting company’s wallet.

That single design change does something a rate rise cannot. A stake-based tax can only reach operators who file Kenyan returns. A deposit-based tax sitting on M-Pesa and Airtel Money reaches every shilling that leaves a Kenyan wallet for a betting account — including accounts held with operators outside Kenyan regulatory reach. KRA had 36 betting firms integrated for real-time monitoring in July 2023, 111 by July 2024 and 143 by June 2026. The rate went down; the visible perimeter went up.

There is a second, less-quoted number that makes the same point harder to argue with. The Finance Act 2025 did not only move the excise — it also replaced the old 20% withholding tax on winnings with a 5% withholding on money leaving a betting wallet. Both new charges sit on the mobile-money rail, one on the way in and one on the way out. In FY2025/26 excise grew 24.9%; withholding tax on betting and gaming grew 59.2%. The two fastest-growing betting tax heads in Kenya are the two collected at the wallet (16Best analysis of KRA collection data).

How much of the tripled base is genuinely new money and how much was always there but invisible? Nobody has published the split, and we will not invent one. But the direction is not in doubt, because deposits should normally be smaller than stakes — a shilling deposited can be staked repeatedly as winnings recycle. A base that goes from KSh 96 billion of stakes to KSh 330 billion of deposits in one year, when the mechanical relationship between those two quantities runs the other way, is not a story about Kenyans suddenly betting 3.4 times more. It is a story about the taxman finally standing where the money passes.

How much tax does Kenya collect per shilling operators keep?

Up to KSh 74 for every KSh 100 of gross gaming revenue Kenyan bookmakers kept in FY2022/23 — a ceiling rather than a measurement, for a reason worth spelling out. KRA’s own published breakdown for that year lists three heads: excise duty of KSh 6.640 billion, withholding tax on winnings of KSh 8.601 billion and betting tax of KSh 3.874 billion — KSh 19.115 billion in total. Because betting tax is levied at 15% of gross gaming revenue, that KSh 3.874 billion implies bookmaking GGR of KSh 25.8 billion. Divide, and you get 74%.

Now the caveats, because this ratio is very easy to abuse and we would rather deflate our own number than have someone else do it. Two of the three heads are clean: excise duty on betting and betting tax are both bookmaking-specific. The withholding tax head is not — in that period Kenyan withholding tax on winnings reached lotteries, gaming and prize competitions as well as sports betting, so an unknown slice of the KSh 8.601 billion numerator sits against revenue that is not in the KSh 25.8 billion denominator. Strip the winnings head out entirely and the floor is KSh 41 of tax per KSh 100 of gross win. The true bookmaking figure sits somewhere between KSh 41 and KSh 74, and closer to the top of that range than the bottom, because sports betting dominated Kenyan payouts in 2022/23.

Note also what the ratio is not: an operator tax rate. Excise falls economically on the person placing the bet and withholding tax on the person collecting the winnings; only the 15% betting tax is charged directly on the operator’s gross win. What it measures is the total state take from the betting value chain per shilling of operator gross win. Even at the KSh 41 floor, that is a heavier extraction than we have computed for any comparable market — the figure on our Brazil page is an effective 27% of GGR once every layer is counted.

KRA press release of 18 July 2023 for the FY2022/23 breakdown; KRA figures via Capital Business for FY2023/24 and FY2024/25. The three published FY2022/23 heads sum to KSh 19.115bn; KRA and its press coverage round the sector total to KSh 19.2bn, and we use the summed figure. Withholding-tax detail was not published for the two later years, so those totals are incomplete and the lower bound is left blank rather than estimated. Implied GGR divides the betting tax head by its 15% statutory rate and therefore covers bookmaking only; casino, lottery and prize-competition revenue sit in separate heads, which is why the ratio is presented as a bounded range.

How much does the average Kenyan adult actually lose?

About KSh 1,394 a year — roughly US$10.78 — on our estimate of FY2025/26 betting revenue spread across every Kenyan adult. KRA reported betting tax growth of 20.3% in FY2025/26, which puts the head at approximately KSh 6.86 billion and implied bookmaking GGR at KSh 45.7 billion, about US$354 million at the 2025 average rate of KSh 129.29. DataReportal’s October 2025 Kenya figures imply an adult population of about 32.8 million (18.4 million social media users stated as 56.1% of adults aged 18 and over).

That per-adult loss is 8.2% of the US$132 global average we derive across this site from H2 Gambling Capital’s US$573 billion of worldwide 2024 player losses. Put the deposit figure through the same division and Kenyan adults put about KSh 10,076 each into betting wallets over the year — roughly KSh 194 a week, or US$1.50. That is the physical shape of this market: not high rollers, but a very large number of people moving bus-fare sums through a phone.

Participation itself is measured, not counted. GeoPoll’s Betting in Africa 2025 report, fielded in April 2025 across 4,191 respondents in six countries, found 79% of Kenyan respondents had placed a bet — second on the continent behind South Africa’s 83% and ahead of Tanzania (74%), Nigeria (73%), Uganda (72%) and Ghana (71%). GeoPoll says plainly that the sample was not demographically representative: it was 68% male, and 80% of it was aged 18 to 34. It describes young, urban, connected phone owners, not the country. It is a participation rate among respondents. It is not a headcount, and treating it as one produces the impossible figure we take apart in the methodology section below.

16Best analysis. GGR is estimated by applying KRA’s reported 20.3% FY2025/26 growth in the betting tax head to the FY2024/25 figure of KSh 5.7 billion, then dividing by the 15% statutory rate. Dollar conversions use the 2025 average of KSh 129.29 per US$. The deposit and loss rows are different quantities and must not be added: deposits recycle through winnings, losses do not.

How does Kenya compare with Nigeria?

Kenyan adults lose meaningfully more to betting than Nigerian adults — our estimates put Kenya at US$10.78 a head against Nigeria’s US$5.80, though on perimeters too different to call that a clean 1.9× — and Kenya collects a far larger share of it, because Nigeria has no national collection rail and, since November 2024, no national regulator either. These are the continent’s two great mobile-money betting markets, and they ran opposite policy experiments.

State the scope of both sides before reading anything into the gap. The Kenyan per-adult figure of US$10.78 is derived from the bookmaking tax head alone and excludes casino, lottery and prize competitions, so it understates total Kenyan gambling losses. The Nigerian figure of US$5.80, from our Nigeria gambling statistics, is derived from an online-market handle total with lottery inside it, applying a 12–25% hold. One is narrower, one is broader; the honest claim is a direction, not a precise multiple. Kenyan per-adult intensity is meaningfully higher than Nigerian, and both sit far below the global average.

Kenyan figures 16Best analysis as set out above; Nigerian figures from our Nigeria page, themselves derived from a naira handle total at a 12–25% hold and converted at 2025 rates. GDP shares use each country’s own nominal GDP series and are not drawn on identical product perimeters. Participation rates come from the same GeoPoll fieldwork and are directly comparable to each other, but they are shares of survey respondents, not of national populations.

Who regulates Kenyan gambling in 2026?

The Gambling Regulatory Authority, which replaced the Betting Control and Licensing Board when the Gambling Control Act 2025 came into force on 26 August 2025. President Ruto assented to the Act — originally the Gambling Control Bill 2023 — on 7 August 2025. On 30 June 2026 the Gambling Control (Licensing) Regulations 2026 were gazetted under section 119(2) of the Act, completing the licensing architecture.

The Act is not a light-touch instrument. Online operators face a KSh 5 million application fee and a KSh 50 million licence fee, with foreign-based operators paying KSh 10 million and KSh 100 million respectively, plus a minimum paid-up capital of KSh 100 million and a KSh 200 million security bond. Offshore sites that fail to geo-block Kenyan residents face fines up to KSh 50 million. A monthly levy of up to 1% of gross gaming revenue funds addiction treatment, research and public awareness.

On advertising, the restrictions are among the strictest written anywhere. The Act bars gambling advertising from television and radio between 6am and 10pm, with an exception for live sports broadcasts — which is a considerable exception in a market whose product is live sport. Celebrities, athletes and influencers may not appear in gambling promotions, advertisements may not portray gambling as a route to wealth, social success or an aspirational lifestyle, and at least 20% of any gambling advertisement must carry responsible-gambling messaging. The Gambling Control (Advertising) Regulations 2026 add pre-approval by the GRA before airing and classification by the Kenya Film Classification Board. Separately, a 15% excise duty on advertising fees for gaming and alcoholic beverages on television, radio, print and billboards sits in the First Schedule to the Excise Duty Act, where the Finance Act 2021 put it, and remains in force.

What does the Finance Act 2026 change?

It restores a 20% withholding tax on winnings from 1 July 2026 — but read the definition Parliament actually enacted, because on its face it covers lotteries and prize competitions and not sports betting. The Finance Act 2025 had scrapped the old 20% charge on winnings and replaced it with a 5% withholding on withdrawals from betting wallets. The 2026 Act, assented on 23 June and effective 1 July, reinstates withholding tax on winnings at 20% for residents and non-residents alike. What it does not do is define winnings the way the headlines describe them.

Here is the detail almost every summary skips. Both PwC and EY read the reinstated definition in section 2 of the Income Tax Act as a pay-out by a person licensed under the Gambling Control Act 2025 from a lottery or prize competition, excluding the amount staked. EY states explicitly that the definition leaves betting and gaming out. Yet plenty of coverage — and several adviser alerts — describe the same provision as a 20% tax on gambling winnings generally. Both cannot be right, and the difference decides whether the largest product in the Kenyan market is inside or outside the charge. Anyone modelling a Kenyan operator should read the gazetted Act rather than any summary, this one included. The same Act also widened the excise base again, bringing horse-racing deposits inside the 5% charge that previously excluded them.

Two further honest caveats. Advisers also disagree on whether the Finance Act 2025’s 5% withholding on wallet withdrawals survives: Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr’s reading of the Bill layered the 20% on top of it, while PwC’s post-enactment summary of Kenyan taxes does not mention a withdrawal levy at all. And the change was opposed by the Gambling Regulatory Authority itself and by the consumer federation COFEK during public participation, which closed on 25 May 2026 — a regulator publicly arguing against its own treasury’s revenue measure is not a common sight.

What should we expect? Kenya’s own record answers it. The 2019 experiment showed that squeezing the market at the operator door removes turnover far faster than it removes revenue, and pushes what remains toward higher-margin products. The 2025 experiment showed that a lower rate collected at the payment rail out-earns a higher rate collected at the operator. A tax on winnings is, structurally, a 2019-type instrument: it is charged at the payout, it depends on operator-side computation, and it is the layer most easily arbitraged by moving play offshore. Our reading is that the deposit levy will keep growing and the winnings tax will underperform its forecast — and if the narrow lottery-and-prize-competition definition holds on audit, it will underperform badly, because it will miss the product that generates almost all the payouts. That is a prediction, and Kenya has surprised forecasters repeatedly. But it is the prediction the spine of this page makes: money is collected where it passes, not where it is earned.

Why do Kenyan gambling figures disagree?

Because three different quantities all get called “the Kenyan betting market,” and the largest is 7 times the smallest. Deposits, stakes and gross gaming revenue for the year to June 2026 stand at KSh 330.5bn, an implied KSh 167bn and an estimated KSh 45.7bn. Every discrepancy we hit building this page falls into one of seven buckets.

1. Deposits, stakes and revenue are three different numbers. KSh 330.5 billion is deposits into wallets. KSh 96.1 billion was declared stakes the year before. KSh 45.7 billion is our estimate of what operators kept. A shilling deposited can be staked several times; a shilling staked is mostly returned as winnings. Reporting that treats these as one series produces both the phantom 275% boom and the phantom collapse.

2. Every Kenyan “market size” figure is a tax base in disguise. Collections divided by the statutory rate is the standard method, and it is why the published figure for July 2022 to June 2023 is exactly KSh 88.5 billion. It also means the number changes whenever Parliament changes the base or the rate, without anyone gambling differently. Six rate changes in seven years makes the resulting series close to uninterpretable unless you carry the rate alongside it, which almost no one does.

3. Licensed and declared is not the same as played. Kenya’s own tax heads contradict each other on this. Divide implied GGR by implied stakes and the hold rate comes out at 29% to 43% across FY2022/23 to FY2024/25 — against an independently measured 27.4% in FY2021/22 and 10.4% in FY2018/19. A genuine 43% sportsbook margin does not exist. Something was under-declared, and moving collection to the wallet is what surfaced it.

4. Survey participation is not a headcount. A report circulated widely in October 2025 credits Kenya with 45.5 million bettors. Kenya has roughly 32.8 million adults, so the claim exceeds every adult in the country by 39%. Reconstruct it and the method is obvious: 45.5 million is 78.7% of Kenya’s 57.8 million total population, which is GeoPoll’s 79% survey participation rate applied to everybody, newborns included. The same report gives Nigeria 168.7 million bettors on the same construction. Neither figure is a count of people.

5. Shillings and dollars, and which rate. The shilling ran at KSh 101.99 to the dollar in 2019, KSh 139.85 in 2023 and about KSh 129.29 in 2025 on the World Bank official period-average series. A 46% rise in shillings across that span is a 15% rise in dollars. Every dollar figure on this page states its rate and year; most published Kenyan gambling figures state neither.

6. Fiscal years, calendar years and rate-change dates. KRA reports July-to-June; GDP, exchange rates and population are calendar-year; and the two most consequential rate changes of the period landed on 27 December 2024 and 1 July 2025 — one mid-fiscal-year, one exactly on the boundary. The 27 December change is why the widely printed KSh 88.2 billion figure for FY2024/25 stakes understates the declared base by about KSh 7.9 billion — our corrected figure is 8.9% higher — because it divides a whole year’s collections by a rate that applied to barely half of it.

7. Sometimes the law itself is reported two different ways. The clearest live example is the Finance Act 2026. Its reinstated definition of “winnings” is read by PwC and EY as covering payouts from a lottery or prize competition only, with EY saying outright that betting and gaming fall outside it — while a good deal of trade and general coverage calls the same provision a 20% tax on gambling winnings. When a page cites a rate without quoting the definition attached to it, that is where the error usually enters. We have flagged it rather than picked a side.

Key takeaways

• The rail beat the rate. Kenya cut betting excise from 15% to 5%, moved collection to the mobile-money wallet, and collections rose 24.9% to a record KSh 16.53 billion. Nothing else in gambling policy demonstrates this as cleanly.
• The KSh 330.5 billion headline is deposits, not stakes, and not revenue. The prior year’s corrected KSh 96.1 billion measured stakes. Comparing them yields a growth rate — 275% as printed, 244% once the prior year is corrected — that describes a change in tax law, not in behaviour.
• Raising the rate raised revenue but not the market. Of the 99% rise in excise collections from FY2022/23 to FY2024/25, 88.2% came from the rate and 11.8% from the declared base, which grew just 8.5% in two years.
• The 2019 crackdown cut turnover 79.9% but revenue only 46.8%, tripling the hold rate from 10.4% to 27.4%. Kenyans staked a fifth as much and lost about half as much.
• Kenya’s betting tax heads came to between KSh 41 and KSh 74 per KSh 100 of bookmaker gross win in FY2022/23 — against an effective 27% of GGR in Brazil. Player-side and operator-side taxes both sit inside that range.
• Per-adult intensity is low. About US$10.78 of estimated betting losses per Kenyan adult a year, 8.2% of the US$132 global average, and meaningfully above Nigeria’s US$5.80 — though on a narrower perimeter, so not a clean multiple.
• Seven years on, the experiment’s verdict is mixed and should be reported as mixed. Estimated revenue is up 16% in dollars; implied turnover is still about 45% below its 2019 peak; tax collected has more than tripled since FY2021/22.
• The policy is not settled, and the newest instrument may not bite. Six excise changes since 2019, a new regulator since August 2025, and a 20% withholding tax on winnings restored on 1 July 2026 over that regulator’s own objection — written, on PwC’s and EY’s reading, to cover lotteries and prize competitions rather than sports betting.

Frequently asked questions

How much do Kenyans bet each year?

KSh 330.5 billion passed into Kenyan betting wallets in the year to June 2026, derived from the KSh 16.527 billion of excise duty the Kenya Revenue Authority collected at the 5 percent rate. That figure measures deposits, not stakes and not operator revenue. The previous year's comparable figure, KSh 96.1 billion, measured the amount staked, because the statutory tax base changed on 1 July 2025. Estimated bookmaking gross gaming revenue for the year to June 2026 is about KSh 45.7 billion, roughly US$354 million.

What is the betting tax in Kenya in 2026?

Excise duty is 5 percent of the amount deposited into a betting wallet, in force since 1 July 2025 under the Finance Act 2025 and extended to horse-racing deposits by the Finance Act 2026. Betting tax is 15 percent of gross gaming revenue, meaning turnover less winnings paid out. From 1 July 2026 the Finance Act 2026 reinstates withholding tax on winnings at 20 percent for residents and non-residents, but PwC and EY both read the enacted definition as a payout from a lottery or prize competition excluding the amount staked, which on its face leaves sports-betting winnings outside the charge. A separate 15 percent excise duty applies to gaming advertising fees, and the Gambling Control Act 2025 adds a monthly levy of up to 1 percent of gross gaming revenue for a responsible-gambling fund.

Why did Kenya cut its betting tax from 15 percent to 5 percent?

To change where the tax is collected rather than how much is charged. The Finance Act 2025 moved the excise charge from the amount staked, which only licensed Kenyan operators declare, to money leaving a mobile-money wallet for a betting account, which the state can see regardless of where the operator sits. Collections rose 24.9 percent to KSh 16.527 billion in the first full year at the lower rate, 115.9 percent of target, with 143 betting and gaming firms integrated into KRA systems for real-time monitoring by June 2026.

What happened to SportPesa in Kenya?

SportPesa suspended Kenyan operations on 28 September 2019 and released 453 employees, one day after Betin did the same. The trigger was the Betting Control and Licensing Board declining to renew 27 operators' licences in July 2019 over unresolved tax compliance, followed by the withdrawal of their mobile-money paybill numbers and SMS short codes. SportPesa returned on 30 October 2020 under a licence held by Milestone Games; the board suspended that licence within a day, and the High Court overturned the suspension.

Did Kenya's gambling crackdown work?

Partly, and the honest answer depends on which number you measure. Bookmaker and public-lottery turnover fell 79.9 percent, from KSh 301.3 billion in the year to June 2019 to KSh 60.6 billion by June 2022. But gross gaming revenue fell only 46.8 percent over the same period, from KSh 31.2 billion to KSh 16.6 billion, because the operator hold rate rose from 10.4 percent to 27.4 percent. Seven years on, estimated revenue is about 16 percent higher in dollar terms than in 2019 while implied turnover remains roughly 45 percent below its peak.

How many Kenyans gamble?

There is no reliable count, and the widely circulated figure of 45.5 million Kenyan bettors is impossible: Kenya has roughly 32.8 million adults, so the claim exceeds every adult in the country by about 39 percent. It reproduces as 79 percent of Kenya's 57.8 million total population, which is GeoPoll's survey participation rate applied to everybody including children. What GeoPoll actually measured, in fieldwork across 4,191 respondents in six countries in early 2025, is that 79 percent of its Kenyan respondents had placed a bet, second on the continent behind South Africa. That sample skewed male and young.

Why do Kenyan gambling market figures vary so much?

Seven reasons. Deposits, stakes and gross gaming revenue are three different quantities routinely quoted as one, and for the year to June 2026 they stand at KSh 330.5 billion, an implied KSh 167 billion and an estimated KSh 45.7 billion. Every Kenyan market-size figure is really a tax base divided by a statutory rate, and that rate changed six times between 2019 and 2026. KRA's own tax heads imply hold rates of up to 43 percent, which no sportsbook achieves, indicating under-declaration of stakes. Survey participation rates get multiplied by total population to manufacture bettor headcounts. Shilling and dollar figures are mixed without stating a rate, and the shilling moved from 101.99 to about 129.29 per dollar between 2019 and 2025. Fiscal years, calendar years and mid-year rate changes are routinely conflated. And the law itself gets reported two ways: PwC and EY read the Finance Act 2026 definition of winnings as covering lotteries and prize competitions only, while much coverage calls the same provision a tax on gambling winnings generally.

Sources

• Kenya Revenue Authority — Betting Sector Records 30% Revenue Growth as KRA Interlinks Firms to Tax System (18 July 2023; FY2022/23 excise KSh 6.640bn, withholding tax on winnings KSh 8.601bn, betting tax KSh 3.874bn)
• Kenya Revenue Authority — Adjustment of Excise Duty Rates by the Tax Laws (Amendment) Act, 2024 (12.5% to 15%, effective 27 December 2024)
• Kenya Revenue Authority — Adjustment of Excise Duty Rates by the Finance Act, 2025 (5% on amounts deposited, effective 1 July 2025)
• Capital Business — KRA Nets Sh13.2bn from Betting Firms (FY2024/25 excise KSh 13.23bn vs KSh 10.6bn; betting tax KSh 5.7bn vs KSh 5.5bn)
• Capital Business — Betting Firms’ Integration into KRA System Boosts Revenue 26.2% to Sh24.2bn (FY2023/24 total KSh 24.2bn vs KSh 19.2bn; 111 firms integrated)
• Business Daily — Gamblers Beat NSE with Sh330bn Stakes in One Year (KSh 330.5bn base, KSh 16.5bn excise, 143 firms integrated as of June 2026; the article describes the base as stakes, which we correct to deposits above)
• Focus Gaming News, reporting KRA FY2025/26 revenue performance — Kenya Betting Tax Revenue Jumps 24.9% to KSh 16.5bn as KRA Beats Target (excise KSh 16.527bn against a KSh 14.261bn target, 115.9% performance; betting tax up 20.3% and withholding tax on betting and gaming up 59.2%)
• Business Daily — Bets Plunge by Sh240bn After Betin, SportPesa Crackdown (turnover KSh 301.3bn to KSh 60.6bn; payouts KSh 270bn to KSh 44bn; GGR KSh 31.2bn to KSh 16.6bn)
• MMS Advocates — Taxation of Betting and Gaming in Kenya (excise duty history: 20% from 7 November 2019, repealed 2020, 7.5% from July 2021)
• RSM Kenya — Highlights of the Kenya Finance Act, 2025 (5% excise on amounts deposited into a customer wallet, effective 1 July 2025)
• The Kenyan Wall Street — Kenya Cuts Betting Excise Duty to 5% (point of taxation moved to mobile-money transfers; 15% betting tax on GGR; 20% withholding on winnings)
• PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries — Kenya: Other Taxes (5% excise on betting and gaming with the base broadened to include horse racing under the Finance Act 2026; 20% withholding tax on winnings, winnings defined as a payout from a lottery or prize competition by a person licensed under the Gambling Control Act 2025)
• EY — Kenya proposes Finance Bill, 2026 and Kenya enacts Finance Act, 2026 (20% withholding on winnings for residents and non-residents; the definition covers lottery and prize competition payouts and excludes betting and gaming)
• Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr — Analysis of the Kenya Finance Bill 2026 (20% on winnings layered over the 5% withdrawal levy; definitions of winnings and withdrawals)
• The Standard — President Ruto assents to Finance Bill, 2026 and The Star — Finance Act 2026 measures take effect today (assent 23 June 2026; most provisions effective 1 July 2026)
• Kenya Law — Gambling Control Act, No. 14 of 2025 (assented 7 August 2025; in force 26 August 2025)
• Bowmans — Kenya: The Gambling Control Act, 2025 — Key Provisions (KSh 20 minimum online stake; advertising restrictions; 1% GGR levy)
• Gambling Regulatory Authority — Gambling Control (Licensing) Regulations, 2026 (gazetted 30 June 2026; licence and foreign-operator fee schedule)
• Business Daily — Kenya to Fine Foreign Gambling Firms Sh50m for Not Blocking Kenyans
• Casino.org — Kenyan Online Betting Operators SportPesa and Betin Sue Government Over Industry Shutdown (27 licences not renewed; paybill and short-code withdrawal, July 2019)
• allAfrica — Kenya: Betting Firms Living on Borrowed Time After Licences Halted (July 2019 licence deadline)
• iGaming Business — SportPesa Resumes Operations in Kenya Under Milestone Licence (30 October 2020)
• iGaming Business — Kenya’s New Finance Act to Hit Casual Bettors (Parliamentary Budget Office projection of KSh 11.4bn vs KSh 5.4bn)
• Safaricom PLC FY2026 results (year ended 31 March 2026), reported by Tech-ish and The Kenya Times — M-Pesa value KSh 41.68trn; 46.4bn transactions (+25.1%); 40.99m 30-day active customers; M-Pesa revenue KSh 182.7bn
• Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, Economic Survey 2026, reported by The Kenyan Wall Street (2025 nominal GDP KSh 17.58 trillion; real growth 4.6%)
• DataReportal — Digital 2026: Kenya (57.8m population; 18.4m social media users stated as 56.1% of adults aged 18+, implying about 32.8m adults; median age 20.0)
• GeoPoll — Report: Betting in Africa 2025 (fieldwork April 2025; 4,191 respondents across six countries; Kenya 79%, South Africa 83%, Tanzania 74%, Nigeria 73%, Uganda 72%, Ghana 71%; sample 68% male and 80% aged 18–34, described by GeoPoll as not fully demographically representative)
• GeoPoll — Understanding the Kenyan Gambling Consumer (April 2018 SMS survey, 1,300 respondents; SportPesa used by 82%)
• World Bank — Official Exchange Rate (LCU per US$, period average), Kenya — KSh 101.99 (2019), 106.45 (2020), 109.64 (2021), 117.87 (2022), 139.85 (2023), 134.82 (2024)
• Exchange Rates UK — USD to KES History 2025 (2025 average KSh 129.29 per US$ — the rate used for every dollar conversion on this page unless stated)
• AllAfrica / InfoWire — 440 Million Africans Bet on Sports in 2025 (21 October 2025 — the source of the 45.5 million Kenyan bettors claim audited above)
• H2 Gambling Capital — global GGR of about US$712bn and player losses of about US$573bn in 2024, the benchmark used across our gambling loss statistics