NGB Annual Report 2025/26: Gambling Revenue Hits R84.5 Billion, What It Means for South African Players

NGB annual report 2025/26: the headline numbers

The National Gambling Board (NGB) has tabled its annual report for the 2025/26 financial year, and the figures are large. Gross gambling revenue (GGR) in South Africa's licensed industry rose to about R84.5 billion, a 13.4% increase on the year before. Gambling tax revenue reached about R6.4 billion. These come from the board's own 2025/26 annual report, which the NGB posted on its website in early October 2026.

Press coverage on 30 October added more detail. The Citizen reported comments from gambling lawyer Garron Whitesman of Whitesmans Attorneys, who put GGR at R84.46 billion, up from R74.5 billion, and provincial gambling taxes at R6.44 billion, up from R5.8 billion. The National reported that total turnover, meaning the full value of all wagers, reached roughly R1.76 trillion, up from R1.5 trillion.

The report matters to South African players for a reason that has little to do with the totals. It lands one week after the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement confirmed that a proposed national online gambling tax is still being designed, and it gives both sides of that argument fresh numbers to use. It also contains the NGB's own admission that it has no system to block illegal offshore gambling websites.

Everything below is sourced to those pages, which we opened on 31 October 2026. Where we do our own arithmetic, we say so. None of it changes what is legal for you today, and none of it is a reason to gamble more.

What GGR and turnover actually measure

Two terms get mixed up in most coverage of gambling figures, so it helps to separate them first.

Turnover is the total value of bets placed. If you stake R100, win R150 and stake the whole R150 again, turnover counts R250. Whitesman made this point in both news reports: turnover includes winnings that are bet repeatedly, so it should not be read as what South Africans actually spend. The R1.76 trillion figure is a measure of activity, not of losses.

Gross gambling revenue is stakes minus winnings paid out. It is what operators keep before they pay salaries, technology, marketing, compliance and tax. It is the closer measure of what players collectively lose, and it is the base on which gambling taxes are normally calculated.

Our own arithmetic, using the rounded figures above: R84.46 billion of GGR on R1.76 trillion of turnover means operators kept roughly 4.8 cents of every rand wagered. That ratio is a blunt average across casinos, bookmakers, bingo and limited payout machines, and the turnover figure is itself approximate, so treat it as an order of magnitude and not a precise statistic.

The Treasury discussion paper on a national online gambling tax uses the same definitions. Reading The case for a national online gambling tax, GGR is described as turnover minus winnings paid to players. The same paper reported R74.5 billion of GGR for 2024/25, which matches the starting point used in the latest coverage, so the year-on-year comparison rests on consistent figures.

Betting drives the growth while casinos slip

The NGB report says betting's share of GGR grew to 74%, or R62.2 billion. Casinos and limited payout machines (LPMs) lost market share, falling to 19% and 5% of total GGR respectively, while bingo stayed at 2%.

To see how fast betting is moving, compare it with the Treasury paper's figures for 2024/25, where betting GGR was about R52.0 billion, casinos about R16.6 billion, LPMs about R4.1 billion and bingo about R1.7 billion. On those numbers, betting grew by roughly 20% in a year (R62.2 billion against R52.0 billion, our arithmetic). Casino GGR at 19% of R84.5 billion works out to around R16 billion, which is flat to slightly lower than the year before. That last figure is derived from a rounded percentage, so it is an estimate and not an NGB number.

The Citizen's report of Whitesman's reading agrees with the direction: continued shift towards betting and bookmaking, while revenue from casinos, bingo and LPMs stayed relatively flat.

The Treasury paper adds context on how this happened. It reported that online betting made up over 85% of betting GGR in 2024/25, and it described the five-year rise in betting GGR as 390% from 2020/21. Those are 2024/25 figures, since the 2025/26 online split was not in the pages we reviewed, so we do not claim the online share for the latest year.

For anyone reading about this from the casino side, one point needs to be stated plainly. The casinos in these statistics are land-based licensed venues. The online casinos that most South African players search for are not part of this licensed market. We return to that in the section on what the figures leave out. If you want the legal background, our South Africa gambling law overview explains how online sports betting and online casino games are treated differently.

How the tax numbers stack up

Provincial gambling tax rose from about R5.8 billion to about R6.44 billion, according to the figures Whitesman cited to The Citizen. That is growth of roughly 11% (our arithmetic), slightly slower than the 13.4% growth in GGR.

Dividing R6.44 billion by R84.46 billion gives about 7.6%. That is a rough effective ratio across every licensed gambling mode and every province, and it is not a tax rate. Provincial rates and bases differ by province and by mode, and the NGB report does not break the tax figure down in the passages we reviewed, so please do not read 7.6% as a rule.

Whitesman gave a more specific operator view. He said licensed online betting operators already pay provincial gambling taxes of typically around 6.5% of GGR plus VAT, which together bring an effective burden of around 18 to 19% of GGR. These are his figures as reported by The Citizen, and we have not independently verified them.

The proposed national tax would sit on top. Treasury's November 2025 discussion paper proposed an additional 20% national tax on online betting GGR, as The National reported on 28 October. Treasury estimated that the combined national and provincial burden would be about 26 to 29% of GGR before VAT. Whitesman and fellow gambling lawyer Wayne Lurie argue that with VAT included the effective burden could reach roughly 38 to 40%.

The two camps are not really disagreeing about arithmetic. They are describing the same tax with and without VAT. If you read a headline saying the burden will be 26% and another saying 40%, both can be correct depending on what is counted.

Our separate explainer on the proposed national online gambling tax and the February 2027 Budget covers the timeline in more detail.

The responsible gambling figures behind the revenue

The NGB report and the news coverage that followed also carry numbers on harm, and they deserve as much attention as the revenue.

The Citizen reported that the report records about R57.4 million in industry contributions to the national responsible gambling foundation, which offers free help to people with gambling problems. The foundation's toll-free helpline received about 1.26 million calls during the year, though Whitesman noted that a significant share related to operational queries. The counselling line took 83,541 calls, of which about 5,443 were classified as treatment-related, and the foundation treated 3,541 people.

The National added figures from the South African Responsible Gambling Foundation. Of 5,199 people screened in 2025/26, 1,345 had high suicide-ideation risk profiles, and 83% of those assessed during counselling-line onboarding reported debt they could not manage. A foundation official, Lillian Rikhotso, said gambling harm goes beyond money and affects mental health, relationships and work.

Whitesman cautioned against treating participation, helpline volumes and the prevalence of harm as interchangeable measures, and that is fair. A call count is not a count of people, and a screened group is not a random sample of the country. Still, the direction of these figures is consistent with the NGB's own wording: it said risks of problem gambling, illegal gambling and the vulnerability of particular groups "rose markedly".

The report also says the NGB paid particular attention to gambling among students and recipients of social assistance grants. If gambling is causing you or someone close to you problems, our responsible gambling page lists limits to set and where to find help. Gambling is entertainment with real financial risk, and it is not a way to earn money.

What the NGB says about illegal offshore gambling

The most direct passage for online casino players is in the NGB's overview. The board describes the growth of illegal online offshore gambling operators that exploit jurisdictional gaps, digital payment systems and international technology platforms to target South African consumers outside the regulated framework. It says these operators undermine licensed operators, erode consumer protection, reduce potential tax revenue and raise money laundering risks.

It also describes what it did about it in 2025/26:

• It issued formal notices and guidance to provincial licensing authorities on Remote Gambling Servers, reinforcing the prohibition of unlawful remote gambling.
• It built a Verified Gambling Operators Web Portal with the provincial authorities, so the public can check whether an operator, online or land-based, is licensed in South Africa.
• It worked with law enforcement, the communications regulator ICASA, financial institutions, the Financial Intelligence Centre and digital platforms.
• It conducted 35 raids and inspections against illegal gambling.
• It developed norms and standards on gambling advertising with the provincial authorities.

Then comes the admission. The report says the absence of a system to block illegal online gambling remains a challenge, and that the NGB has begun to consider adopting such a system. In other words, as of the end of March 2026 there was no blocking system in place, and the board was only starting to consider one. Our earlier piece on the NGB's plan to block illegal gambling websites follows that thread.

For a player, the practical reading is simple. Offshore casinos accepting South African players are not licensed here, so the Verified Operators portal will not list them. That is not a technicality. It means no South African regulator is positioned to resolve a dispute, and the NGB itself describes these sites as operating without the safeguards of the regulated framework.

What the figures leave out

It is worth being careful about what a regulator's statistics can and cannot show.

First, the NGB numbers describe licensed activity. Money wagered at unlicensed offshore casinos does not appear in provincial returns, and we are not aware of any reliable public measurement of it. The Treasury paper itself says it is exceedingly difficult to stop operators outside South Africa from accepting South African players. Any claim about how much South Africans lose offshore should be treated with caution unless it names a method.

Second, the headline tax debate is about online betting, meaning licensed bookmakers, not offshore casinos. A national tax on licensed bookmakers does nothing directly to the legal status of offshore casino games. The industry argument, repeated by both Whitesman and Lurie, is indirect: higher taxes could make licensed operators less competitive and push some customers to illegal sites that pay no South African tax. Whether that happens is a prediction, not a measured result, and Treasury has not published modelling we could check.

Third, a revenue figure tells you nothing about fairness or player outcomes. A rise in GGR means players collectively lost more money to licensed operators in 2025/26 than in 2024/25. It does not say whether any individual had a good or bad experience.

Finally, we did not review all 150 pages of the report. We read the sections the web extraction returned and checked the key figures against two news reports and the Treasury paper. Readers wanting the sector tables, provincial splits and the responsible gambling chapter should open the full NGB document.

What this means for South African players and what to watch

Nothing in the annual report changes your legal position today. Licensed online sports betting is allowed. Online casino games are not licensed under South African law, and the NGB repeated that position in 2026. Offshore sites accepting South African players remain unlicensed here, whatever licence they hold elsewhere.

Here is what we think is worth watching, labelled as our reading and not as fact:

• February 2027 Budget. The finance minister said the final tax design will be announced then. Even after that, Lurie notes the tax would have to pass through Parliament as a Money Bill before taking effect.
• Any blocking system. The NGB says it has begun to consider one. We would expect more detail in the next performance plan, but that is a guess and not a published commitment.
• Payments. The report names financial institutions as enforcement partners. If you use bank cards or instant EFT at offshore sites, see our notes on payment methods for how deposits work and what can go wrong.
• The Western Cape and other provincial returns. Our analysis of Western Cape gambling tax figures shows one province in detail, and the national totals here help put it in proportion.

If you do play, set deposit limits before you start, never stake money you need for bills or food, and do not chase losses. The NGB's own figures on debt and counselling demand are a reminder that the risk is real.

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