Online Sports betting Growth and Shortcomings in Africa

March 8, 2023

The industry stakeholder and experts in the sports betting industry say many punters see Africa’s growing online betting industry as a source of entertainment, regular income, and a possible path out of poverty. But critics warn that its rise is underpinned by widespread poverty, unemployment and poor or non-existent regulation.

However, continent-wide data on sports betting is not readily available, though snapshots from different countries show its growing popularity and impact on bettors.

Interestingly online sports betting operators have enjoyed recent growth, driven by the widening adoption of smartphones, mobile payments, internet penetration and the pandemic-era demand for digital entertainment.

Much of the betting enthusiasts focus on football games in European leagues, while more recently, the just concluded World Cup has been the primary draw for football-loving fans. As mentioned in the article, the growth has its fair share of impacts on African punters.

A South African government survey from 2017, the most recent on gambling, found that sports betting grew 14% per year from 2008 to 2016, even as the number of South Africans who gambled fell from 57% to a third of the country’s adult population.

Today, online sports betting makes up 45% of the South African gambling market, “a starkly different picture to just 10 years ago when casinos held 80% of market share,” said the National Gambling Board.

Sibongile Simelane-Quntana, executive director of the South African Responsible Gambling Foundation, said that her group has seen “significant growth” in online sports betting in the aftermath of pandemic-related lockdowns.

Funding for her group, which comes from gambling houses, “has increased by 50% from where it was before the lockdown,” she said. African gamblers often count on winnings to fund daily needs.

In the South African township of Soweto, Teleko Mnguni told the AP he has seen fellow punters faint under the stress of wagering on sports betting.

“People collapse spending hours on their mobile phones , and we never know if it is due to hunger or any conditions,” Mnguni said.

This could also be said for Nigeria. The retail lottery, casino and sports betting market has been the dominant force for over a decade. The retail lottery business controls 80% of the market share.

Still, in recent times, there has been a paradigm shift in the market, especially in the sports betting industry, which has experienced significant growth in the online space and is now the first choice resort for the youth.

Lagos-based sports psychologist John Atara said people see it as a way to make “quick money, and with just their mobile phones, it makes it even more easier for the punters to wager at the comfort of their home”.

While in Uganda, the parliamentary committee proposed banning day-time sports betting to encourage productivity and creativity among the population due to the high rate of youths participating in sports betting.

According to Kabula County MP Mr Enos Asiimwe, The Uganda government also plans to introduce an electric monitoring system that will, among others, close gaps exploited by illicit gamblers.

Bettors in Uganda have lost an estimate of over Sh500m to an illegal betting site that has been using gaming activities as a strategy to market its membership on different online platforms.

This a testament to the growing online betting industry and its own shortcoming over poor regulation, in which victims, primarily unemployed youths, have resorted to betting as the alternative means of survival, though with the continent experiencing high youth unemployment rates.

It is a known fact that the online sports betting industry is growing at a lightning pace each year. The interest in the online market keeps soaring, and the missing piece of the growth is adequately regulating the betting ecosystem.