The Rise of Mobile Sports Betting in South Africa’s Digital Economy

Ninety-two per cent. That is the share of South African online gamblers who told the National Gambling Board’s national survey that they had gambled on a cell phone. Laptops came a distant second at 39%. Smart TVs managed 6%.

The survey ran in April 2023 and fed a socio-economic impact study the Board posted to its website this year. Its device table reads like a footnote, but it is closer to a blueprint for how the largest segment of the country’s licensed gambling market was built: on handsets people bought for themselves, under licences issued by the provinces rather than by Pretoria. Sports betting sits at the centre of it, because bookmakers could already take bets by phone and website when the land-based industry shut in 2020.

The lockdown year put betting in front, and it never gave the lead back

A decade before the pandemic, casinos dominated the industry, earning 84.4% of gross gambling revenue in 2009/10 on the Board’s figures. By 2019/20 their share had slipped to 56.3% of R32.7 billion, with betting on 26.8%, and the Board was already describing the casino decline as a sign of saturation.

Then the buildings closed. In the first quarter of 2020/21 the industry earned R1.4 billion, against R7.7 billion a year earlier, a fall of 83%. The Board recorded that the land-based industry had been shut down completely for the first time since it was regulated.

Over the full year revenue fell to R23.3 billion. Casinos lost half of theirs. Betting grew 21.2%, the only mode that grew at all, and finished with 45.6% of the market against 39.2% for casinos. The Board’s explanation was short: betting by phone and on bookmakers’ websites was still permitted while venues were closed. Mpumalanga was the one province whose total revenue rose, on an almost 100% jump in betting.

Lockdown didn’t invent phone betting. It removed the alternatives for long enough to turn a channel into a habit, and when the casinos reopened the order stayed put. The casino share had been sliding for a decade before that, so the pandemic sped up a shift rather than starting one.

A bookmaker licence with no premises on it

Who may take that phone bet is a provincial decision. The Constitution makes gambling, outside lotteries and sports pools, a shared national and provincial matter, and in practice each province licenses bookmakers through its own gambling authority, which collects tax at rates the province sets by regulation.

A recent certificate shows what that system now licenses. On 6 January 2026 the Mpumalanga Economic Regulator issued a bookmaker licence under section 32B of the Mpumalanga Gambling Act, 1995, to VB South Africa (Pty) Ltd. Under the heading for land-based premises, the certificate states that no premises are authorised. It lists one approved web address, an administrative office in White River and an annual renewal date.

A bookmaker without a shop is the business model the lockdown year proved could stand on its own, and it is the plainest picture of mobile betting in economic terms: the licence approves a web address, and the customer supplies the device. Virgin Bet, the trading name on that certificate, shows the model from launch day rather than as a retrofit. The trade publication Gaming Intelligence reported on 30 March 2026 that the brand had gone live locally, making South Africa the first country beyond the UK to get it since it started in 2019.

Its South African site says the Android and iOS apps carry every feature of the website, which puts the whole shop on the customer’s handset. None of that needs a counter or a high-street lease. The renewal clause is where the province keeps its grip, because the operator has to return to the regulator with fees and documents every year.

The customer paid for the shopfront

A bookmaker with no shop still needs a screen in the customer’s hand, and South Africans have been buying those screens themselves. ICASA’s latest State of the ICT Sector report counted 83.0 million smartphone subscriptions in 2025, up from 65.3 million in 2021.

Handsets got cheaper at the bottom of the range. The lowest-priced smartphone in ICASA’s operator survey fell from R499 in 2024 to R399 in 2025. Coverage is close to universal on 4G, at 99.5% of the population, and 5G reached 58.0% in 2025, up from 46.6%. The ITU’s 2GB mobile data basket cost about R152 a month in 2024, or 1.63% of monthly income per head, down from roughly R215 in 2021.

Usage followed price. Prepaid mobile data revenue rose 7.7% in 2025 while messaging revenue fell 49.2%, which the regulator largely put down to apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal. For any app-based business, betting included, that is the real distribution network. The mobile networks built it, and the customer’s own data bundle keeps it running.

It isn’t the whole country, though. DataReportal’s Digital 2026 report estimated that 13.3 million South Africans, about one in five, were still offline at the end of 2025, and ICASA counted active subscriptions falling 2.8% last year even as the SIM count edged up. The mobile economy is large. It’s also uneven.

Football supplies the fixtures, and the group chat supplies the tips

The Board’s socio-economic impact study shows how far betting on sport has moved off the high street. Among the gamblers it surveyed, 46% had bet on sports and other events online in the previous year, against 22% at a retail outlet. The study’s summary sets that against a betting figure of 13% in the Board’s 2017 survey.

Location matters as much as device. Asked where they gambled online, 94% said at home, 25% while commuting and only 13% at a sports venue or racetrack. The stadium is where the football happens, but the sofa is where most of the punters are.

The focus groups add the texture. Participants described betting as part of the sporting experience, especially for soccer fans. One put it plainly: “I feel like I have to have at least something that will motivate me to watch the game”. Participants also described WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter groups where punters trade tips and betting codes, and one said they had left a WhatsApp group because of the pressure it created.

The domestic league gives that habit a long calendar. Orlando Pirates won the 2025/26 title, their first league championship in 14 years according to the Premier Soccer League’s website, at the end of a ten-month season. If the Board’s survey is a guide, most of the people betting on a run like that were doing it from home, not from the stands.

The revenue moved to the phone, but most of the jobs didn’t

In 2022, after betting had overtaken casinos on revenue, casinos and betting each accounted for 40% of the 31,183 people the gambling industry employed directly, according to the same study. Counting indirect and induced effects, it put gambling’s contribution at 0.83% of GDP and 144,619 jobs, about 0.91% of national employment.

Treasury, which wants a heavier tax on online gambling, draws the conclusion directly. Physical casinos, its discussion paper argues, bring employment and local spending on infrastructure, accommodation and nearby retail. Online play is different, in the paper’s words: “Few, if any, similar benefits are associated with online gambling.”

The margins help explain it. Betting operators licensed in Mpumalanga returned between 96% and 97% of stakes to customers in every quarter of 2024/25, the Board’s audited statistics show. Keeping three or four rand in every hundred is a volume business. It rewards scale and automation far more than headcount.

One caution applies. The figures predate the newest online-only licences, and the direct count covers staff of gambling businesses only, so an outside supplier’s developers appear, if at all, in the modelled total. The defensible claim is narrower: by 2022 betting was earning more than casinos without employing more people.

Treasury wants a national rate on top of nine provincial ones

Those thin margins are now a fiscal question. Treasury put out a discussion paper setting out the case for a national online gambling tax on 25 November 2025. It proposes a 20% tax on gross gambling revenue from online gambling, on top of the provincial taxes bookmakers already pay, which the paper puts at between 6% and 9% (one passage says 6% to 7%).

The combined rate would land between 26% and 29%, and by the paper’s estimate the national share alone would raise over R10 billion at current revenue, though Treasury says the main aim is to discourage problem gambling. The paper’s sharpest argument concerns the licensing map. A single national rate, it says, would stop provinces competing on headline tax rates to attract operators to their own boards, a contest Treasury says could hold rates below what is optimal for society.

Treasury has tried this before. The 2012 Budget proposed an extra 1% national levy for 2013, and it was never implemented. This time the 2026 Budget Review, tabled in February, promised a workshop with commenters and then draft legislation later in the year. The draft Taxation Laws Amendment Bill released at the end of July does not mention gambling, and by early October no separate gambling tax bill had been published for comment.

The paper is right about the provincial contest and vague about the response. Its reasoning means a lower rate has to be earned with local jobs and investment, an argument a casino can make easily and an online-only bookmaker hardly at all. Whether a 26% to 29% burden changes behaviour, or simply squeezes odds and marketing budgets, is what the consultation should settle, and the paper puts no number on it.

Parliament has carried the national rules since 2018

Tax is half of the national question. The other half has sat in Parliament for eight years. The National Gambling Amendment Bill was introduced in 2018, passed the National Assembly within months and was rejected by the National Council of Provinces in 2021. It died with the parliamentary term on 21 May 2024, came back two months later and went to a mediation committee, which reported in June 2025. Sixteen months on, the Parliamentary Monitoring Group still shows it waiting on the National Assembly.

Parks Tau, the trade minister, told MPs on 26 May 2026 that his department was advancing the bill to give national government stronger powers against illegal online gambling and more consistent standards across provincial lines. He also pointed to a new Verified Operators Web Portal listing licensed operators nationally.

None of this changes what a bookmaker licence already covers. The Board’s position, as Treasury’s paper records it, is that online betting with a South African-licensed bookmaker on sport or horse racing is legitimate. The bill’s new powers target illegal gambling, from forfeiting unlawful winnings to curbing the payments linked to it.

For anyone betting in South Africa, the practical step is simpler than the policy: check the provincial licence behind the app against that portal. The legal age for betting is 18, and the South African Responsible Gambling Foundation takes calls from anyone concerned about their gambling on its toll-free line, 0800 006 008.

For anyone reading this market as a digital-economy story, two dates matter more than any handset price or data tariff: the day Treasury publishes its draft tax legislation, and the day the amendment bill next reaches a vote. Between them they will decide whether a licence with no premises on it stays as cheap to run as it is today.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not encourage gambling. Sports betting involves financial risks and should be approached responsibly in accordance with South African laws.