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Gambling Laws in South Africa 2026: A Casino-Era Law

Almost every guide to South African gambling law opens with the sentence “online gambling is illegal in South Africa.” That sentence describes a minority of the market as if it were the whole of it, and it buries the actual story: South Africa is running a casino statute over a phone market. Online sports betting, taken by a bookmaker licensed by one of nine provincial boards, is entirely lawful — and in FY2024/25 it produced R44.5 billion, at least 59.7% of all gross gambling revenue in the country. Online casino games are the illegal part, and nobody has ever held a licence to offer them. The vertical that became the market is the one the 2004 Act treated as a sideline: the bookmaker’s licence, supervised most thinly and taxed at the lowest effective rate of any mode in the country (16Best analysis).

Is online gambling illegal in South Africa?

Only partly — and the half that is legal is the half where the money is. Online betting on sports and horse racing through a South African-licensed bookmaker is lawful. Online casino games, slots, roulette and poker are not, because Parliament never brought into force the law that would have licensed them.

The National Gambling Board states the distinction in its own words: online betting is a game “played through a bookmaker licensed in South Africa where the punter has no interaction with, or influence on, the outcome of the event that they are betting on.” Section 11 of the National Gambling Act 7 of 2004 then closes the other door: “A person must not engage in or make available an interactive game except as authorised in terms of this Act or any other national law.” An interactive game is defined as a gambling game played through an electronic agent accessed over the internet, other than one that can only be played on licensed premises. Nobody has ever held a South African interactive gambling licence, because the licensing machinery was written in 2008 and never switched on.

So the correct one-line answer is not “online gambling is illegal.” It is: you may bet online, you may not play online. Which raises the obvious next question — if nobody at national level licensed the online market, who did?

If betting is legal, who licensed it?

Nine provincial licensing authorities, each acting under its own provincial gambling act, using a licence category — the bookmaker’s licence — that predates the internet. The National Gambling Board licenses nothing. It monitors, registers, publishes statistics and enforces at the edges.

The constitutional arrangement explains why. Under Schedule 4 of the Constitution, “casinos, racing, gambling and wagering, excluding lotteries and sports pools” is a functional area of concurrent national and provincial competence. National Treasury puts it plainly in its 2025 discussion paper: gambling other than lotteries and sports pools is concurrent, and the framework “has not kept pace with the gambling developments over the years creating regulatory gaps.” Lotteries and sports pools, excluded from that concurrent list, sit with national government alone — which is why the National Lottery is licensed by the Minister on the advice of the National Lotteries Commission and appears nowhere in the NGB’s numbers.

The nine authorities are the Eastern Cape Gambling Board, Free State Gambling and Liquor Authority, Gauteng Gambling Board, KwaZulu-Natal Gaming and Betting Board, Limpopo Gambling Board, Mpumalanga Economic Regulator, Northern Cape Gambling Board, North West Gambling Board, and Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board. Each writes its own regulations, sets its own tax schedule, and decides for itself what a bookmaker may accept a bet on. That last power is where the whole story lives.

What may each licence legally offer?

Six operating licence families, all provincial except the National Lottery, and only one of them — the casino licence — may lawfully offer casino games. Everything contentious in South African gambling law is an argument about the boundary of the bookmaker’s licence.

Read the last two rows together and the architecture is obvious. Three provincial licence families cover physical venues, two cover betting, one covers the national lottery. The category that would cover online casino play is an empty row. Operators did not wait for it to be filled; they worked with the row above it.

If the law was built for casinos, where did the money go?

Into the bookmaker’s licence, and overwhelmingly onto phones. In FY2010/11 casinos took 81.9% of South African gross gambling revenue and betting took 11.7%. On the NGB’s own fifteen-year series those lines finish FY2024/25 at 22.2% and 69.9%; run the arithmetic on the audited mode table for the same year and you get 22.3% and 69.8%. On either basis this is not a shift in market share. It is an inversion.

The crossover is datable. In FY2019/20 casinos held 56.3% of GGR and betting 26.8%. In FY2020/21 — 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021, the year South African casinos spent months closed under the national lockdown — casinos fell to 39.2% and betting jumped to 45.6%. The NGB attributes the swap to shifting preferences and easier access to online gambling after COVID-19. What matters legally is that betting never gave the lead back. It compounded.

Year-on-year growth rates are the NGB’s own; the three-year compound annual growth rates from FY2021/22 to FY2024/25 are 16Best calculations from the same table. Note that casinos, LPMs and bingo all shrank in the most recent year in nominal rands, before inflation.

That card deserves unpacking, because it is the single sharpest way to see the mismatch. Add up everything the 2004 Act was designed to inspect — the R16.65bn from 36 operational casinos, the R4.15bn from 15,743 active limited payout machines, the R1.73bn from 13,452 bingo terminals, and the R7.52bn of betting the NGB records as retail — and you get R30.04 billion. Online betting on its own produced R44.46 billion. The regulator can walk into every one of those venues. It cannot walk into a phone.

So which part of “online” is actually unlawful?

The interactive game — anything where the punter influences or participates in the outcome — and, since 21 October 2025 in Gauteng at least, fixed-odds betting on the outcome of a roulette spin. The boundary is not between offline and online. It is between betting on an event and playing a game.

Two judgments mark the edges. In Casino Enterprises (Pty) Ltd v Gauteng Gambling Board and Others (653/2010) [2011] ZASCA 155, decided 28 September 2011, the Supreme Court of Appeal held that an internet casino run from Swaziland (now Eswatini) by the operator of the Piggs Peak casino was nonetheless conducting unlawful gambling when South Africans played on it: the gambling event happens where the player activates the game, not where the server sits. Offshore licensing is no answer to South African law, and that remains the governing authority on offshore online casino play.

Fourteen years later the court drew the other edge. In Portapa (Pty) Ltd t/a Supabets and Others v Casino Association of South Africa (182/2024; 215/2024) [2025] ZASCA 158, handed down on 21 October 2025, the SCA interpreted section 55 of the Gauteng Gambling Act 4 of 1995. Supabets had, since 2017, streamed live roulette from a casino in Lithuania into its Gauteng betting shops and taken fixed-odds bets on each spin. The court held that a bookmaker’s licence authorises bets on “sporting events,” that roulette is not a sporting event, and that bookmakers in Gauteng may not offer fixed-odds bets on roulette unless they also hold a casino licence.

Be careful with what followed. The NGB welcomed the ruling on 29 October 2025 as confirmation that no bookmaker may offer casino games as contingencies. The South African Bookmakers’ Association responded that the judgment neither says nor implies that bookmakers nationwide are barred from offering betting on roulette. Both are describing the same judgment. The SCA construed one province’s statute; other provinces define permissible contingencies differently, and the question of what a Western Cape or Mpumalanga bookmaker may offer was not before the court. As of mid-2026 that conflict is unresolved — which tells you something about a national framework that cannot answer a national question.

Why has the 2008 fix never taken effect?

Because it needs a presidential proclamation that has not been issued in eighteen years. The National Gambling Amendment Act 10 of 2008 was assented to on 10 July 2008 and published in Government Gazette 31245 of 14 July 2008. It has never commenced.

This is the most commonly mis-stated fact in South African gambling law, so here is the mechanism. Section 44 of the Amendment Act provides that the Act comes into operation on a date fixed by the President by proclamation in the Gazette. No such proclamation has been issued. The consolidated National Gambling Act accordingly carries, immediately beneath section 11, the editorial note: “S. 11 to be substituted by s. 10 of Act No. 10 of 2008 with effect from a date to be fixed by the President by proclamation in the Gazette – date not fixed.” The same note appears under section 12 on the protection of minors and section 15 on advertising. An entire amending statute sits in the law reports in the conditional tense.

Distinguish the three states carefully, because most coverage collapses them. Passed means both Houses agreed the Bill. Assented means the President signed it, which happened on 10 July 2008. Commenced means it has legal force — and that step, for Act 10 of 2008, has never been taken. A signed statute that has not commenced changes nothing. Section 11 of the 2004 Act, in its original wording, is still the operative law.

What it would have done matters, because it is the road not taken. The 2008 Act would have given the National Gambling Board exclusive national jurisdiction to license interactive gambling operators, software manufacturers and suppliers, with the Minister empowered to make regulations covering everything from player protection to website monitoring, and a tax on interactive gambling to be imposed by separate legislation. Draft interactive gambling regulations were published for comment in 2009. National Treasury’s own summary of the outcome is blunt: the amendments “have not been implemented,” the 2004 Act remains the primary legislation, and “therefore, interactive gambling remains illegal in South Africa.”

What is in Parliament in 2026?

Two stalled bills, one policy review and a tax proposal — and none of them is law. Anyone telling you South Africa has legalised or banned online casino in 2026 is describing a document, not a statute.

Look at the Remote Gambling Bill row against the 2008 row and the concession is unmistakable. The 2008 Act would have pulled interactive licensing up to the National Gambling Board. The 2024 bill hands it to the provincial authorities, with a licence granted in one province valid for players anywhere. After sixteen years of stalemate, the proposed cure has been rewritten to match the reality the bookmaker’s licence already created.

What does the state actually charge?

Provincial gambling taxes on gross gambling revenue, at rates each province sets for itself, plus ordinary company tax on profits — and nothing at all on a player’s winnings. There is no national gambling tax in South Africa, and there never has been.

Gauteng’s schedule, set by GN 570 of 1997 under the Gauteng Gambling Act, is the clearest published example: casinos 9% of gross gaming revenue, bingo 12%, route operators (limited payout machines) 15%, totalisators 9% plus an 8.5% Sports Development Fund levy, and bookmakers 6.5% of gross betting revenue plus a 1% levy. The Western Cape runs a progressive structure instead — casinos from 8% on taxable revenue below R14.2 million up to 19% above R71.0 million, LPMs 10% to 20%, bingo 10% to 15%, totalisators 6%, and bookmakers 3% tax on winning bets plus a 3% betting levy.

Scope note: every rate above is charged on gross gambling revenue or a close provincial variant of it, not on turnover, and the provincial columns are not directly comparable because the bases and thresholds differ. Do not stack these percentages into a single effective rate — the corporate income tax layer sits on profit, a different quantity again.

Now put the collections next to the revenue. In FY2024/25 the nine provinces collected R5.81 billion in gambling taxes and levies: R1.72bn from casinos, R3.42bn from betting, R525m from LPMs and R146m from bingo. Divide each by its GGR and the rate schedule stops being an abstraction.

Two independent routes to the same answer, and it is worth being exact about why they are only two. ICLG’s 2026 South Africa chapter, reading the provincial rate schedules, gives casinos 10–15% of GGR and bookmakers an average of 6.5%. Our arithmetic, dividing money actually collected by revenue actually earned, lands at 10.3% and 6.6%. National Treasury quotes ranges too — but its footnotes cite ICLG and Chambers, so it is repeating the first route rather than supplying a third. Treasury is also inconsistent with itself: page 12 of the discussion paper puts bookmakers at “between 6 and 7 per cent” and page 20 at “between 6 and 9 per cent.” Take the narrower reading or the wider one; either way the statutory schedules and the cash collected agree that a betting rand is taxed at roughly two-thirds the rate of a casino rand. The gap is real, not a rounding artefact.

That card is where Treasury’s rationale meets its arithmetic. Casinos directly employ 13,759 people against R16.65bn of GGR; bookmakers and totalisators employ 13,983 between them against R51.97bn. Almost identical headcounts, more than three times the revenue — which is exactly the “employment and local benefits” argument Treasury uses to justify taxing casinos harder. The argument is sound. It is also the reason the tax base shrinks every year the money keeps moving, because the state has attached its highest rate to its slowest-growing mode. (Employment counts come from the NGB’s annual report and revenue from its statistics deck; using the annual report’s slightly larger betting figure instead moves the ratio from 3.07× to 3.09×.)

Which brings us to the 2026 proposal. National Treasury’s November 2025 discussion paper proposes a 20% national tax on the gross gambling revenue of online betting and interactive gambling, in addition to the provincial charge, producing a combined 26–29% and, on Treasury’s estimate, over R10 billion a year. Note the base: remote play only, land-based untouched. Note also the sentence that makes the paper worth reading twice — where local operators are involved in interactive gambling, “which is still illegal, they will also be subject to the proposed tax to the extent of the gross gambling revenue related to these activities.” The state is proposing to tax an activity it prohibits.

One more fiscal detail most coverage skips, and it needs its accounting stated carefully. The industry funds the South African Responsible Gambling Foundation at 0.1% of GGR. In FY2024/25 the Foundation collected R40.9 million against an expected R59.3 million — a 31% shortfall it attributes to operators and regulators that simply do not remit. Read the benchmark before you quote it: that R59.3m is 0.1% of the prior year’s GGR of R59.31bn, because the Foundation bills on the last published national total. Measure the same R40.9m against the R74.50bn actually earned in FY2024/25 and the levy captured 0.055% of GGR, or 55% of the 0.1% it is meant to raise (16Best analysis; the Foundation’s figures are unaudited as printed in the NGB’s annual report). The harm levy is not merely short. It is falling behind a market that grows faster than the year-old number it is billed against.

The counselling line tells the same story from the other end. It logged 1,013,626 calls in FY2024/25 against 140,263 the year before, and 48,710 of them were online-betting account queries — cash-out requests, account closures, FICA uploads — landing on an addiction helpline. To be fair to the Foundation, that is an improvement: wrong calls fell 28% from 67,919 after it installed a diversion that routes them back to operators’ own customer-service lines. The number is still nearly fifty thousand calls a year to a gambling-harm helpline from people who wanted a withdrawal.

What happens to an unlawful online bet?

The winnings are unenforceable, they can be seized before they reach the player, and a High Court can declare them forfeit to the State. Section 16 of the National Gambling Act is the sharpest instrument in the book, and it points at the money rather than the operator.

Section 16(1)(c) makes a debt incurred in unlawful gambling unenforceable at law. Section 16(2) then bars any person from knowingly paying winnings from gambling that is unlawful under the Act. Anyone prevented from paying must remit those winnings to the National Gambling Board to be held in trust; the Board investigates and either releases them or applies to the High Court for an order declaring them forfeit to the State. On the exchange-control side, Authorised Dealers must decline requests to buy foreign currency for offshore gambling, and residents may not use cards for it; incoming funds may be seized by the receiving bank and handed to the NGB. The Board’s own guidance to the public is that gambling illegally online risks confiscation, investigation and possible prosecution.

Enforcement against operators is thinner. In FY2024/25 the NGB compiled a list of 90 identified illegal gambling operators and secured site-access blocking by 23 of them; it initiated 22 raids and issued 10 warning notices to unlicensed operators. Criminal exposure under section 83(1) runs to a fine not exceeding R10 million or imprisonment not exceeding ten years, or both; section 83(2) adds an administrative penalty of up to 10% of annual turnover for a licensee that breaches a licence condition. Set 90 identified operators against a market where licensed betting alone turns over R1.13 trillion a year and the asymmetry speaks for itself. Legal commentators note there is little track record of enforcement beyond fines, and that action against unlicensed online operators is materially less successful than against licensees.

For the individual, the rules are simple and worth stating plainly. The minimum age is 18: the Act defines a minor as a person under 18 and section 12 bars minors from gambling premises, machines and activities, and bars adults from falsely vouching for them. Licensees must take reasonable measures to verify age. Section 14 provides for a register of excluded persons, and section 15 requires every gambling advertisement to carry a prescribed warning against addictive and compulsive gambling, bars advertising aimed at minors, bars false or misleading claims, and bars any element encouraging removal from the exclusion register.

Who runs the National Lottery now?

Sizekhaya Holdings, which took over as the fourth National Lottery operator on 1 June 2026 under an eight-year licence, ending Ithuba’s eleven-year run. The lottery is governed by the Lotteries Act 57 of 1997, licensed by the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition on the advice of the National Lotteries Commission, and sits entirely outside every NGB number on this page.

The handover was messy. Ithuba’s third licence expired at the end of May 2025 and the dtic signed a twelve-month temporary licence, running to 31 May 2026, to keep the lottery going while Sizekhaya prepared. Ithuba went to the Pretoria High Court seeking to interdict the award; on 28 November 2025 Tolmay J dismissed the urgent application, holding that Ithuba had not established a clear right, or even a prima facie right, to the relief it sought. That did not end the fight — Ithuba’s main review, alongside a parallel challenge, remains before the Gauteng Division in Pretoria. Sizekhaya went live on 1 June 2026 with new games, returning televised draws and more than 5,500 new retail terminals. Existing online lottery accounts were closed before the transition, with no carry-over of balances.

Note how the same drift shows up here. Ithuba reported that more than 60% of National Lottery sales were online by 2024, against about 2% when it took over in 2015 — the state monopoly moved to phones on the same trajectory as the bookmakers, and the Lotteries Act said nothing about it either.

Two scope warnings. First, the widely repeated “R180 billion lottery licence” figure is projected ticket sales across eight years — handle, not operator revenue, and not remotely comparable to the R74.5bn of GGR discussed above. Ithuba’s reported record annual ticket sales were R7.28 billion in FY2024, which is itself turnover rather than revenue. Second, betting on the outcome of the National Lottery is not the same thing as buying a ticket. In Ithuba Holdings (Pty) Ltd v Lottostar (Pty) Ltd and Others (A46/2020) [2021] ZAMPMBHC 39, decided 30 August 2021, the Mpumalanga Division sitting at Mbombela interdicted LottoStar from offering bets on the outcome of any lottery, under section 57 of the Lotteries Act 57 of 1997 — and the reason cuts to this page’s point. The court held that a provincial gambling act cannot authorise what the province has no competence to regulate, and lotteries sit outside the concurrent list. The single limit on the provincial bookmaker’s licence that has actually bitten at national level is the one subject the Constitution keeps away from provinces altogether.

How does South Africa compare?

Among the markets we have mapped, South Africa is the one whose fight is not about who regulates or at what rate, but about what a licence category written in 1995 is allowed to contain. Its peers changed something. South Africa changed nothing and the market moved anyway.

Scope note: these charges sit on different bases and must not be ranked as like-for-like. South Africa’s, Nigeria’s, Brazil’s and the Philippines’ figures are gross-gambling-revenue based; Kenya’s 5% is charged on wallet deposits and its 15% on GGR. Read the column as who charges what on which base, not as a rate table.

Nigeria’s problem is authority: a court removed the federal power and left 37 rulebooks — the handle-versus-revenue confusion that produced its circulated trillion-naira figures is unpicked in our Nigeria gambling statistics. Kenya’s problem is fiscal churn: six changes to the betting excise in six years. Brazil built a regime from scratch and switched it on. South Africa is the odd one out because nothing was struck down, nothing was rewritten and nothing was switched on — the law simply stayed where it was while the market walked away from it. The full country-by-country map, ranked by channelization rather than legality, is our sports betting laws by country hub.

Why do the sources disagree?

Because South African gambling produces four different big numbers — turnover, gross gambling revenue, tax collected and lottery sales — because the same regulator publishes two versions of the same year, and because one prohibited activity is unmeasurable by definition. The traps, in order of how often they produce a wrong sentence:

• Turnover is not revenue, and here the gap is 20-fold. The R1.50 trillion figure that headlines most coverage is turnover — every rand wagered, including recycled winnings staked again. Gross gambling revenue, what operators actually keep, was R74.5 billion. Bookmakers and totalisators together held just 4.6% of the R1.126 trillion staked with them; casinos held 5.7% of the R292.8 billion staked with them (16Best analysis). Betting earns more than casinos on a thinner margin because its volume is 3.8 times larger. Quote the trillion as revenue and every downstream conclusion is wrong by a factor of twenty. Note also that this hold percentage is not the NGB’s published return-to-player figure, which is measured per game play rather than across a year of recycled stakes; the two are different quantities and must not be subtracted from one another.
• “Online gambling is illegal in South Africa” is half true and therefore mostly false. Online sports betting through a provincially licensed bookmaker is lawful and is the largest single source of gambling revenue in the country. Online casino games are unlawful. A page that states the flat prohibition writes off at least 59.7% of South African gambling revenue as illegal when it is in fact licensed.
• Passed is not commenced, and introduced is not passed. The National Gambling Amendment Act 10 of 2008 exists, was assented to on 10 July 2008, and has a legal citation — and has never been in force, because section 44 leaves commencement to a proclamation that was never issued. The National Gambling Amendment Bill B27-2018 was passed by the National Assembly in December 2018, rejected by the NCOP in December 2021, and survives as B27D-2018 on Parliament’s order papers: agreed in mediation, still not enacted. The Remote Gambling Bill B11-2024 was introduced in April 2024 and does not appear on Parliament’s Bills Before Parliament list of 27 February 2026 at all. The 20% online tax is a discussion paper. None of these four is law, and all four are routinely reported as though they were.
• The NGB publishes two figures for the same year, and the deck contradicts itself as a result. Its standalone National Gambling Statistics FY2024/25 (audited, 9 October 2025) gives total GGR of R74,498,495,925 with betting at R51.97bn. Its Annual Report 2024/25 snapshot table gives R74,857,617,238 with betting at R52.33bn — a R359 million difference — under a footnote reading “Audited statistics received from all PLAs excluding Mpumalanga.” That footnote is the explanation: the annual report’s larger total carries an unaudited Mpumalanga, and Mpumalanga is the province that books 41.5% of national turnover. We use the R74.5bn statistics-deck figure throughout, as National Treasury does. Now the part we have not seen stated anywhere: the deck prints the casino share as 22.3% in its mode breakdown and 22.2% in its fifteen-year trend chart, and these are not two roundings of the same sum. R16,645,815,707 over R74,498,495,925 is 22.34%, which rounds to 22.3% and nothing else. Divide the identical casino figure by the Annual Report total of R74,857,617,238 and you get 22.24% — 22.2%. The same test works down the whole column: betting 69.9%, LPMs 5.5%, bingo 2.3% on the Annual Report base, against 69.8%, 5.6% and 2.3% on the deck’s own. The trend chart’s final year is drawn on the Annual Report total while the rest of the deck is drawn on its own. We label which base every share on this page comes from (16Best analysis).
• Treasury’s paper mixes vintages. The November 2025 discussion paper pairs FY2024/25 turnover and GGR with a gambling tax total of R4.8 billion — casinos 36.5%, betting 49.9%. That tax split is the FY2023/24 position. The NGB’s audited FY2024/25 total is R5.81 billion, with betting at 58.9%. Both documents are right about their own year; comparing them without checking will make the betting share of tax look 9 points lower than it is (16Best analysis).
• “Online betting” is only measured in some provinces. The NGB’s FY2024/25 deck disaggregates online from retail betting in six provinces — Western Cape, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, North West, Eastern Cape and Northern Cape. Treasury’s paper, written a month earlier, lists five: the same set without the Eastern Cape. Betting placed online in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal or the Free State falls into the retail column either way. So the published 85.5% online share of betting GGR, and the 59.7% share of total GGR, are floors. Treasury’s own revenue estimate, which needs a base above R50bn, is a second reason to read them that way.
• Prohibited volume cannot be counted. Nobody knows what South Africans stake with unlicensed offshore online casinos, because there is no licence, no return and no reporting obligation. The NGB’s list of 90 identified illegal operators is a count of sites it found, not of money. A figure of around R50 billion a year for the illegal offshore market circulates in 2026 press coverage; we have not been able to trace it to a published methodology and do not adopt it. Do not confuse it with the R50 billion elsewhere on this page, either: that one is the taxable base Treasury’s own revenue estimate implies for legal online betting plus interactive gambling, and the two numbers happen to collide while measuring completely different things. Any figure purporting to size South Africa’s illegal online casino market is an estimate built on assumptions, and we do not publish one.
• The Portapa judgment is about Gauteng. Headlines in late 2025 described the SCA as banning online gambling nationwide. It construed section 55 of the Gauteng Gambling Act. The NGB reads it as national confirmation; the bookmakers’ association reads it as province-specific. We report the disagreement rather than resolving it, because the court did not.

One conversion note. All figures on this page are in rands, because that is how they are published and because the rand moved substantially across the period covered. Where a dollar sense is useful: reporting on the NGB’s 15 October 2025 presentation to the Portfolio Committee, CDC Gaming converted the same FY2024/25 turnover of R1.50 trillion to about US$86.5 billion, which implies roughly R17.35 to the dollar in October 2025; on that rate the R74.5 billion of GGR is about US$4.3 billion. Cite the rands, and state the rate and date for any dollar figure — the rand of October 2025 is not the rand of the year being measured.

Key takeaways

• The law is a casino law; the market is a phone market. The National Gambling Act 7 of 2004 and nine provincial acts were built around licensed premises. In FY2024/25 online betting alone produced R44.5bn — 48% more than every casino, pub machine, bingo terminal and betting shop in the country combined.
• The inversion is complete and datable. On the NGB’s fifteen-year series casinos held 81.9% of GGR in FY2010/11 and 22.2% in FY2024/25 while betting went from 11.7% to 69.9%, overtaking casinos in FY2020/21; on the audited mode table for FY2024/25 the same year reads 22.3% and 69.8%. Betting compounded at 49.8% a year over the last three years while casinos managed 6.6% and shrank 4.1% in the most recent one.
• Online betting is legal; online casino is not. Section 11 prohibits unauthorised interactive games and nothing has ever been authorised. Bookmakers licensed by provinces may lawfully take bets online — which is why the flat claim that “online gambling is illegal in South Africa” misdescribes the majority of the market.
• The 2008 fix was signed and never switched on. The National Gambling Amendment Act 10 of 2008 was assented to on 10 July 2008 and still awaits the proclamation its own section 44 requires; the consolidated Act reads “date not fixed.” The 2004 Act told the Minister to introduce interactive-gambling legislation within two years, and he did, late but he did. Eighteen years on, nobody has taken the step the Act never put a deadline on.
• The winning vertical pays the lowest rate. Provinces collected an implied 6.6% of betting GGR against 10.3% of casino GGR and 12.7% of LPM GGR. At the casino rate, betting would have paid about R1.9bn more in FY2024/25 alone.
• A 20% national online tax is proposed, not law. Treasury’s November 2025 paper would add 20% on online and interactive GGR, taking the combined burden to 26–29%. Applied to FY2024/25 online betting GGR it would raise about R8.9bn — roughly 1.5 times everything the nine provinces currently collect.
• Enforcement points at the money, not the operator. Section 16 makes unlawful gambling debts unenforceable and lets the High Court forfeit winnings to the State; exchange control blocks card and currency routes. Against that, the NGB identified 90 illegal operators and got 23 to block access in FY2024/25.
• Nothing has changed and everything has changed. No statute was struck down, none was rewritten, none was commenced. South Africa’s gambling law in 2026 is the law of 2004 — governing a market in which the licence category it treated as peripheral now earns seven rands in every ten.

Frequently asked questions

Is online gambling legal in South Africa in 2026?

Partly. Online betting on sports and horse racing through a bookmaker licensed by one of the nine provincial licensing authorities is legal for adults aged 18 and over, and in the 2024/25 financial year it produced about R44.5 billion, at least 59.7 percent of all gross gambling revenue in the country. Online casino games, online slots and online poker are unlawful, because section 11 of the National Gambling Act 7 of 2004 prohibits engaging in or making available an interactive game except as authorised by national law, and no national law has ever authorised one. The National Gambling Amendment Act 10 of 2008, which would have created an interactive gambling licensing regime, was passed but has never been brought into force.

Who regulates gambling in South Africa?

Licensing is done by nine provincial licensing authorities, one per province, under nine provincial gambling acts. The National Gambling Board does not issue operating licences; it monitors market conduct and market share under section 65 of the National Gambling Act 7 of 2004, maintains national registers, publishes the national gambling statistics and pursues illegal operators. The National Lottery is separate again, licensed by the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition on the advice of the National Lotteries Commission under the Lotteries Act 57 of 1997, because lotteries and sports pools are excluded from the concurrent national and provincial competence set out in Schedule 4 of the Constitution.

Is the National Gambling Amendment Act 10 of 2008 in force?

No. It was assented to on 10 July 2008 and published in Government Gazette 31245 of 14 July 2008, but it has never commenced. Section 44 of the Amendment Act provides that it comes into operation on a date fixed by the President by proclamation in the Gazette, and no such proclamation has been issued in the eighteen years since. The consolidated National Gambling Act accordingly still carries the editorial note that section 11 is to be substituted by section 10 of Act No. 10 of 2008 with effect from a date to be fixed by the President by proclamation in the Gazette, with the date not fixed. The same note appears under the sections on the protection of minors and on advertising. National Treasury confirmed the position in its November 2025 discussion paper, stating that the amendments have not been implemented, that the 2004 Act remains the primary legislation, and that interactive gambling therefore remains illegal in South Africa.

How is gambling taxed in South Africa?

By the provinces, on gross gambling revenue, at rates each province sets for itself. Casinos are generally taxed at 10 to 15 percent of gross gambling revenue and bookmakers at roughly 6 to 7 percent, although National Treasury's November 2025 discussion paper quotes 6 to 7 percent on one page and 6 to 9 percent on another. In Gauteng the schedule is 9 percent for casinos, 12 percent for bingo, 15 percent for limited payout machine route operators, and 6.5 percent plus a 1 percent levy for bookmakers. The Western Cape uses progressive bands instead, with casinos from 8 to 19 percent and bookmakers at 3 percent plus a 3 percent betting levy. Dividing actual collections by revenue for 2024/25 gives implied effective rates of 10.3 percent on casinos, 6.6 percent on betting and 12.7 percent on limited payout machines. There is no national gambling tax; a 20 percent national tax on online gross gambling revenue was proposed by National Treasury in November 2025 but has not been enacted.

Are gambling winnings taxed in South Africa?

Generally no. A once-off windfall from gambling authorised under South African law is not treated as taxable income, though a person who generates frequent income from gambling is obliged to declare it. There is no withholding tax on winnings. A 15 percent withholding tax on gambling winnings above R25,000 was proposed in the 2011 Budget for implementation from 1 April 2012 but was abandoned after consultation revealed enforcement and compliance difficulties, and a proposed 1 percent national levy on a uniform provincial tax base, floated in the 2012 Budget for April 2013, was also never implemented. Claims that South Africa levies a 15 percent tax on bookmaker winnings describe a proposal that never became law.

What did the Supreme Court of Appeal decide about bookmakers and roulette in 2025?

On 21 October 2025, in Portapa (Pty) Limited t/a Supabets and Others v Casino Association of South Africa and Another, case numbers 182/2024 and 215/2024, reported as [2025] ZASCA 158, the Supreme Court of Appeal held that bookmakers licensed in Gauteng may not offer fixed-odds bets on the outcome of roulette unless they also hold a casino licence. Supabets had streamed live roulette from a casino in Lithuania into Gauteng betting shops since 2017 and taken fixed-odds bets on each spin. The court interpreted section 55 of the Gauteng Gambling Act 4 of 1995 and found that roulette is not a sporting event. The judgment construes one province's statute. It did not ban online gambling nationally, and the National Gambling Board and the South African Bookmakers Association continue to disagree about how far it reaches.

Who runs the National Lottery in South Africa now?

Sizekhaya Holdings, which took over on 1 June 2026 under an eight-year licence as the fourth National Lottery operator, replacing Ithuba Holdings after eleven years. Ithuba's licence expired at the end of May 2025 and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition granted it a twelve-month temporary licence while the transition was prepared. Ithuba's urgent application to interdict the handover was dismissed by the Pretoria High Court on 28 November 2025, the court holding that Ithuba had not shown even a prima facie right to the relief it sought; its main review of the award is still pending. Existing online lottery accounts were closed before the changeover with no carry-over of balances. National Lottery sales sit entirely outside the National Gambling Board's gross gambling revenue figures, so the R74.5 billion national total does not include them.

Sources

• National Gambling Board — National Gambling Statistics FY2024/25 (audited, published 9 October 2025) (GGR, turnover, taxes and levies by mode and province; 15-year share series)
• National Gambling Board — Annual Report 2024/25 (market conduct: 36 casinos, 315 bookmakers, 15,743 LPMs, 13,452 bingo positions; employment 33,169; 90 illegal operators identified, 23 blocked; NRGP collections)
• National Treasury — The Case for a National Online Gambling Tax (discussion paper, November 2025) (proposed 20% on online GGR; Gauteng and Western Cape tax schedules; 2011 and 2012 failed proposals; regulatory history)
• National Gambling Act 7 of 2004, consolidated text — sections 11, 12, 15, 16 and 83 with commencement notes for Act No. 10 of 2008
• Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board — National Gambling Act 7 of 2004, commencement 1 November 2004
• South African Government — National Gambling Amendment Act 10 of 2008
• Supreme Court of Appeal — Portapa (Pty) Limited t/a Supabets and Others v Casino Association of South Africa and Another (182/2024; 215/2024) [2025] ZASCA 158 (21 October 2025)
• Werksmans Attorneys — SCA clarifies boundaries between casino and bookmaker licences in Gauteng
• Mooney Ford Attorneys — No, the SCA has not banned online gambling: what Portapa v CASA actually decided
• South African Bookmakers’ Association — Media statement on the SCA judgment and online betting
• Supreme Court of Appeal — Casino Enterprises (Pty) Ltd (Swaziland) v Gauteng Gambling Board [2011] ZASCA 155 (28 September 2011)
• Parliament of South Africa — National Gambling Amendment Bill (B27-2018) status history (NCOP rejection 14 December 2021; revival in the NA 25 July 2024 and the NCOP 29 July 2024; mediation referral 15 May 2025)
• Parliament of South Africa — Bills Before Parliament, 27 February 2026 (B27D-2018 at item 1 on the NA Order Paper, B27B-2018 at item 1 on the NCOP Order Paper; no Remote Gambling Bill listed)
• Parliamentary Monitoring Group — ATC250613: Report of the Mediation Committee on the National Gambling Amendment Bill [B27B-2018], dated 13 June 2025 (recommends both Houses approve the second reading of B27D-2018)
• Remote Gambling Bill [B11-2024] — full text as introduced (sections 10 to 13: provincial licensing of remote gambling)
• South African Government — Remote Gambling Bill B11-2024, introduced 16 April 2024
• ICLG — Gambling Laws and Regulations South Africa 2026 (licence categories, tax ranges, enforcement record, exchange control)
• Chambers and Partners — Gaming Law 2025: South Africa (licence duration and renewal, penalties, ARB advertising guideline timing, status of the 2008 amendment)
• Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr — Is National Treasury gambling on taxpayers? (discussion paper November 2025; comment deadline 27 February 2026)
• Forvis Mazars — Taxing the digital dice: South Africa’s proposed online gambling tax (20% rate, 26–29% combined, over R10bn estimate)
• Business Day — New gambling advertising rules expected by July (norms and standards timetable, February 2026)
• Eyewitness News — Ithuba exits as national lottery operator after more than a decade
• iGaming Business — Sizekhaya takes South Africa’s lottery licence as court battle looms
• Mpumalanga Division, Mbombela — Ithuba Holdings (Pty) Ltd v Lottostar (Pty) Ltd and Others (A46/2020) [2021] ZAMPMBHC 39 (30 August 2021) (section 57, Lotteries Act 57 of 1997; provinces have no competence over lotteries)
• Mail & Guardian — Betting on South Africa’s lotto is illegal, court orders (LottoStar interdict, 5 September 2021)
• World Lotteries Association — Almost a decade of wins: ITHUBA (FY2024 record ticket sales of R7.28bn; over 60% of National Lottery sales online in 2024 against about 2% in 2015)
• Yogonet — South Africa moves to tighten gambling laws and advertising rules (National Gambling Policy Council resolution of 3 July 2026; Gambling Technical Committee; advertising norms still not in force)
• CDC Gaming — Online betting drives South Africa’s US$86.5B gambling turnover (rand-to-dollar conversion basis used on this page)