The supreme court of appeal has upheld a judgment that online fixed-odds betting operators cannot offer casino games and other forms of online gambling – a move that has been welcomed by the National Gambling Board (NGB).
The NGB said in a statement on Wednesday that South African laws do not allow for interactive or online gambling, with only the betting sector allowed to offer such services online.
“This SCA judgment has affirmed the deliberate South African gambling policy approach to the regulation of casinos, betting, limited payout machines and bingo as separate modes of gambling. Licensees are required to operate strictly within the parameters of their licensed gambling mode,” the NGB said.
“The authority to accept bets online by betting licensees was not intended to extend to interactive gambling as this remains unlawful in terms of the National Gambling Act.”
The court case, which was in favour of the Gauteng Gambling Board against Portapa – the company trading as Supabets – and others, is symptomatic of a systemic problem highlighted by NGB acting CEO Lungile Dukwana in a presentation to parliament earlier this month.
According to Dukwana, some of the provincial authorities tasked with regulating gambling have been using loopholes in legislation to allow online gambling under the guise of “gambling contingencies”.
In Wednesday’s statement, Dukwana called for the provinces to take a tougher line on online gambling to ensure licensees adhered to regulation. He also called on bookmakers offering casino-style online games to “refrain from such practices and comply with applicable laws”.
Centre stage
“The NGB calls on the provincial licensing authorities to monitor that their respective licensees comply with the applicable law and their licence conditions and also ensure that swift and decisive action is taken in accordance with the applicable laws of the country in cases of non-compliance,” said Dukwana.
Online gambling activity has taken centre stage as more and more of South Africa’s most vulnerable are drawn in by ease of access in the hopes of making ends meet.
Read: Online casinos feast on social grants – Pick n Pay boss calls for ad ban
At a parliamentary press briefing on Monday, chairman of the higher education portfolio committee Tebogo Letsie said the committee is worried that students dependent on financial aid who do not receive their allowances on time are turning to online gambling to try and fill the gap. However, they usually end up losing and falling into a debt trap instead.
A similar problem is rearing its head among social grant recipients. Pick n Pay CEO Sean Summers told investors on Monday that research done by “a number of South African institutions” estimated that more than 20% of the social grants disbursed by government were being gambled online. Summers called for a ban on the advertising of online money games.
The judgment by the supreme court referred to the Gauteng Gambling Act of 1995. The National Gambling Act of 2004 has similar provisions regarding online interactive games. Even so, both pieces of legislation were drafted prior to a profound digitalisation of the industry, which began in the 2010s and culminated in the surpassing, in revenue terms, of physical establishments by online platforms in 2020 – during the Covid lockdowns.
Calls for an update to South Africa’s gambling laws have come from across the political spectrum, including from Rise Mzansi’s Makashule Gana, who warned parliament in November last year that online gambling is growing into South Africa’s next “big social ill”.
Read: SA gamblers abandon casinos for phones as online betting surges
“While this judgment was premised on the interpretation of the Gauteng Gambling Act, its implications extend to all bookmakers across the country. Interactive gambling is unlawful and any person or entity offering such games is engaging in unlawful gambling operations,” said the NGB. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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