South Africans wagered more than R1 trillion last year. Two-thirds of it was spent on betting, mostly online, on things like sportsand horse racing.
The money spent on betting has been going up and up since around 2021.
The turnover from betting now far surpasses casinos, which used to be the most popular way to gamble in this country.
Betting on sports and other contingencies is driving this surge. Half the gross revenue from gambling is from online betting, according to National Gambling Board statistics.
“Gambling has transitioned from a pastime enjoyed by small pockets of society to being a commonplace activity,” notes the National Gambling Authority.
The Western Cape and Mpumalanga have reported the steepest rises in gambling revenue.
The Western Cape has surged past Gauteng, which four years ago was the top revenue earner, to record more than R5 billion more in revenue than Gauteng in the 2024 financial year.
Mpumalanga, recorded nearly the same gross revenue as Gauteng, which is surprising given its much smaller population.
In fact, in terms of the amount of money spent on gambling, or turnover, Mpumalanga beat both Gauteng and the Western Cape in the 2024 financial year.
Betting on sports and contingencies is the hands-down favourite way to wager in Mpumalanga and the Western Cape.
It accounts for 96% of the money spent on gambling in Mpumalanga and 84% in the Western Cape.
Casinos are still where the gambling money in Gauteng is spent, recording 77% of the turnover for the 2024 financial year, according to the National Gambling Board.
More was spent in casinos in KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and the Eastern Cape.
Bingo is popular in North West and the Eastern Cape, where it contributes a quarter of the gambling turnover.
But the meteoric rise of betting means it has by far the highest turnover in the country: R761 billion compared with R297 billion for casinos.
The government isn’t complaining because it collected R4.8 billion from taxes and levies on all that money people spent on gambling in the last financial year.
How often a month do you bet on a sporting event?
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