{"id":286354,"date":"2026-02-07T22:49:39","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T22:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/286354\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T22:49:39","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T22:49:39","slug":"sas-gambling-problem-getting-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/286354\/","title":{"rendered":"SA’s gambling problem getting worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warning:<\/p>\n

This article may contain graphic and\/or adult content unsuitable for minors and sensitive readers.<\/p>\n

Read the article<\/p>\n

Stock image pixabay<\/p>\n

You thought gambling in SA was bad enough as it is, but it\u2019s getting worse.<\/p>\n

A new study by research house Trade Intelligence shows 39% of online punters are gambling more than they did a year ago. More worrying is the fact that gamblers are sacrificing other spending priorities, particularly groceries, to place bets.<\/p>\n

Some 65% of those surveyed cited \u2018making more money\u2019 as a top reason for gambling. The thrill and excitement of betting was less of a motivation, challenging the assumption that gambling is purely for entertainment.<\/p>\n

Research such as this \u2013 coming on top of other studies released in 2025 \u2013 shows many households are turning to gambling out of desperation.<\/p>\n

Some 44% of those surveyed said they would have bought groceries if the money had not been gambled away.<\/p>\n

This gives further credence to claims by retailers that online gambling is reducing disposable income among vulnerable segments of the population.<\/p>\n

Retailers such as Pick n Pay, Famous Brands and The Foschini Group (TFG) have highlighted the damage caused by online gambling to retail sales, now regarded as more troubling than competition from e-commerce platforms such as Temu and Shein.<\/p>\n

Impact across income groups<\/p>\n

Recent research by Experian, which has access to 55 million consumer records, shows that some categories of distressed households are spending up to 40% of their gross monthly income on gambling.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a similar story for the poorest households, many of which are spending up to half of their South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) grants on bets, according to Experian.<\/p>\n

Even affluent groups were found to be spending 10-12% of their incomes on gambling.<\/p>\n

The middle market segment was found to spend 38-50% of its income on gambling, nearly a third more than they spend on groceries.<\/p>\n

According to the National Gambling Board (NGB), R1.5 trillion was wagered or spent on all forms of gambling in the 2024\/25 financial year.<\/p>\n

This includes winnings that were recycled back into new bets. Still, this is an astonishing 20% of GDP. Divided by 365 days of the year, that\u2019s R4 billion every day.<\/p>\n

The NGB also reports that 70% of this spend is on online\u00a0gambling.<\/p>\n

Once bets that have been recycled are stripped out, the gross gambling revenue (GGR) earned by SA gambling houses comes to R74.5 billion \u2013 a figure that is growing by about 25% a year, well in excess of economic growth.<\/p>\n

The biggest gambling platforms in SA are Betway, owned by New York-listed Super Group, and Hollywoodbets. Between them, they clocked more than 60 million online visits a month in 2025.<\/p>\n

Sports betting is estimated to account for more than 60% of GGR, fuelled by mobile apps and heavily promoted local sports games.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: National Gambling Board, Stats SA, EconData<\/p>\n

Illegal gambling<\/p>\n

These figures do not consider the economic impact of illegal gambling, which is reckoned to account for about 62% of total gambling in SA. This includes bets placed by South Africans with operators licensed outside the country, in jurisdictions such as Malta or the Philippines.<\/p>\n

Sean Coleman, head of the South African Bookmakers\u2019 Association, reckons there are more than 2 000 illegal online gambling operators targeting SA.<\/p>\n

Many of these are disguised as SA-domiciled sites but are often run from weakly regulated jurisdictions such as Cura\u00e7ao, Gibraltar, or the Isle of Man.<\/p>\n

National Treasury released a discussion paper in February 2025 proposing a 20% national tax on GGR, while the NGB has called for stricter enforcement of advertising laws by provincial licensing authorities.<\/p>\n

This would include restrictions on when advertising is allowed and controls on celebrity endorsements.<\/p>\n

The National Gambling Amendment Bill is intended to impose national controls on gambling, but has faced delays due to turf wars over national versus provincial powers.<\/p>\n

While some have called for outright bans on online gambling, such bans will only drive it underground, warns Jaco van Jaarsveldt, head of commercial strategy and innovation at Experian.<\/p>\n

He argues for more robust education around the consequences of gambling, with an understanding that the house always wins.<\/p>\n

This story first appeared in Moneyweb.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warning: This article may contain graphic and\/or adult content unsuitable for minors and sensitive readers. Read the article…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[103,61,60,410,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-286354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}