South Africa Tops Online Gambling Participation Ranking: What 32.3 Per Cent Means

What the South Africa online gambling participation ranking says

South Africa now sits at the top of a global table for online gambling. According to Focus Gaming News Africa, market research company GWI ranked South Africa first among 48 markets in its Digital 2026 Global Overview Report. The figure is 32.3 per cent: that share of internet users aged 16 and older said they had visited a gambling or betting website or app in the previous month. The story was published on 27 October 2026, and Visual Capitalist had charted the same data three days earlier.

Norway came second at 31.2 per cent, then Greece at 25.8 per cent and New Zealand at 24.0 per cent. Ghana and Hungary were level on 21.5 per cent. The United Kingdom managed 19.6 per cent, Brazil 19.0 per cent and Australia 18.0 per cent, the same as Nigeria. Kenya was 13th on 16.0 per cent. At the other end, the United States recorded 10.2 per cent and South Korea just 2.7 per cent.

Headlines about this ranking are easy to misread, so this post goes through it slowly. It is our reading of published figures, not a new survey. We have not seen the underlying GWI dataset, only the two reports above, so everything here is limited to what those pages state.

One more point before the detail. This is a statistic about visits, not about wins, losses or legality. Where it touches casino play, remember that no operator holds a South African licence for remote casino games. Our South Africa legal overview explains the difference between a site that accepts South African players and one that is licensed here.

What the 32.3 per cent figure measures, and what it does not

The metric is narrow. It counts a person as a participant if they opened a gambling or betting website or app at least once in the month before the survey. Focus Gaming News Africa spells out the limits plainly: the ranking does not measure confirmed bets, money wagered or operator revenue, and it does not show whether a respondent placed a bet, checked odds or used some other feature.

That matters in South Africa because a large share of the visits are probably to sports betting and racing brands. A person who opens a bookmaker app to check Saturday's fixtures counts, even if they never stake a cent. We cannot say how many of the visits in the 32.3 per cent were to licensed bookmakers and how many were to offshore casino sites. Neither report breaks it down, and we will not guess.

The survey wave is also not brand new. Visual Capitalist says the numbers come from GWI's second quarter 2025 survey, published in the Digital 2026 report. So the ranking describes behaviour from the middle of 2025, not October 2026. Anything that has changed since, including advertising rules or enforcement, is not reflected.

Finally, the base is internet users aged 16 and older, not the whole population. In a country with large differences in data access, the people who are online are not a perfect mirror of everyone. That cuts both ways, and we mention it only so the number is not stretched further than it can go.

How South Africa compares with Norway, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya

The most interesting comparison is with Norway, the runner-up. Visual Capitalist notes that Norway is one of Europe's more tightly regulated gambling markets, with major gambling run through Norsk Tipping and Norsk Rikstoto, mandatory loss limits, and payment blocking and website blocking against foreign platforms introduced in 2025. A strict regime and a very high participation rate can sit side by side. Rules change how people gamble; they do not necessarily change how many people open the app.

On the African side, Focus Gaming News Africa puts Ghana fifth, Nigeria level tenth and Kenya 13th, so three African countries are in the top 10 and a fourth is in the top 15. Visual Capitalist adds a useful contrast: Morocco is on 7.3 per cent, so South Africa's rate is more than four times higher.

Rank and money are different things, too. Focus reports H2 Gambling Capital estimates that Nigeria's online gambling gross win was US$1.1bn in 2025 against US$883.3m in Ghana, even though Ghana ranks higher on participation. Separate GeoPoll research cited in the same story found that 60 per cent of respondents in Ghana and 54 per cent in Nigeria had placed a bet in the previous 12 months. That is an annual betting figure, so it cannot be set directly against the monthly visit rate.

The United States is the other reminder. It has a huge gambling industry by revenue but only 10.2 per cent monthly participation in this ranking. A country can have fewer people gambling and still produce enormous revenue, and the reverse can also be true.

The money behind the South Africa online gambling numbers

The participation rate arrives alongside other recent figures that point the same way. Focus Gaming News Africa reports that the South African Reserve Bank, in its March 2026 Quarterly Bulletin, put online betting gross gambling revenue (GGR) at R44bn in the 2024/25 financial year, up from R29bn a year earlier. Online betting made up 85.5 per cent of total betting revenue in that period.

A second report, from the Solidarity Research Institute (SRI) and covered by Focus Gaming News Africa on 19 October 2026, goes wider. SRI says online gambling in South Africa grew by 390 per cent between 2021 and 2025. It puts total wagers in 2024/25 at about R1.5tn, with almost three quarters placed online, and operators keeping R74.5bn in gross gambling revenue after paying out winnings.

The R1.5tn figure is turnover. It includes winnings that players wager again, so it is not the amount players lost. The R74.5bn GGR figure is closer to what operators kept. When you see a headline trillion, read it as the size of the churn, not the size of the loss.

For context, Visual Capitalist cites National Gambling Board statistics showing turnover of R1.1 trillion in 2023/24, with gross gambling revenue up 25.7 per cent to R59.3 billion and betting about 61 per cent of that revenue. Put the NGB 2023/24 figure beside the SRI figure for 2024/25 and the direction is clear. We would not compare the exact numbers line by line, since the sources define and collect them differently.

What the SRI report adds about household spending

The SRI report, written by economic researcher Theuns du Buisson, pairs the growth numbers with household data. It cites Statistics South Africa figures for 2023 showing gambling at R191.4bn, or 34.4 per cent of household spending on services. Healthcare was the only service category higher, at R199.7bn.

Read that carefully. The number is spending on gambling services as a category, and we have not seen how Stats SA treats stakes that are won back, so we cannot say how much of it is net loss. We are reporting what SRI says, and a reader should treat it as one analyst's framing of public data.

The report also cites preliminary National Gambling Board research suggesting that some people are taking out high-risk loans or using social grants to fund gambling. International research it refers to links online gambling with a two to fourfold higher likelihood of problem gambling compared with other forms. Those are serious claims, and they are the reason a high participation rate is a public health conversation as well as a market-size story.

Solidarity's asks are tighter gambling advertising rules, stronger enforcement against illegal online casinos and better safeguards for young people and financially vulnerable people. Its executive director, Hannes Noëth, warned that losses can affect children and other family members by reducing the money for household necessities.

Licensed betting, unlicensed casinos and why the distinction matters

The SRI report separates licensed online betting, which is legal in South Africa subject to licensing requirements, from online casino games, which remain prohibited under the country's gambling laws. It also raises concern about continued advertising of illegal online casino platforms. That split is the heart of the matter for anyone reading a participation ranking.

A South African adult who visits a gambling site is not necessarily doing anything illegal. The law targets operators who offer prohibited services, and the ranking says nothing about who is on the other side of the screen. What a player can control is the choice of site, and that is where checks help. Look for a clear licence number, confirm it with the issuing authority, and read the terms before depositing. Our FICA verification guide explains the identity checks you should expect from a serious operator, and a site that skips them entirely deserves suspicion.

We list casinos on this site that accept South African players, but accepting players is not the same as holding a South African licence, and none of the pages we publish should be read as saying otherwise. Our reviews still carry placeholder markers where facts have not been researched and sourced.

There is also a measurement gap that nobody has closed in public. A visit to a licensed bookmaker, a visit to an unlicensed casino and a visit to a lottery results page all look the same in a survey that asks only about gambling or betting sites and apps. Until someone separates them, headline participation says little about how many South Africans are playing prohibited casino games in particular. Anyone who claims a precise number for that should be asked for their source.

If a participation rate of nearly one in three internet users sounds high to you, you are not alone. It is one reason regulators and lawmakers keep returning to advertising and enforcement, which brings us to what may happen next.

What this could change: tax, blocking and advertising

Three policy threads are live, and the ranking will probably be quoted in all of them. First, tax. The SRI report argues that any new online gambling tax should be accompanied by effective measures to block illegal operators. We covered the proposal in our post on the national online gambling tax and the February 2027 budget, including what is and is not confirmed.

Second, blocking. The National Gambling Board has been looking at ways to block illegal gambling websites. Our explainer on the NGB plan to block illegal gambling websites sets out where that stands. Norway's 2025 website and payment blocking, mentioned above, is a reminder that blocking does not by itself bring participation down.

Third, advertising. SRI links wider smartphone access and more gambling advertising to the growth it reports. That is its conclusion, not a settled finding, and the participation data cannot prove cause. But it gives advertising rules a political argument, and we expect to see it used.

For readers following the money, the practical questions are simple. Will a tax on online gambling be set at a level that changes what operators offer? Will blocking be backed by law and by the payment channels players use? Will advertising limits cover offshore brands that market to South Africans? Each answer would reach players through prices, promotions and which sites stay reachable, and none has been settled by the data in this post.

None of these are decided by a participation statistic. What the ranking does is give policymakers, journalists and campaigners a simple headline, and simple headlines can shape debates faster than careful ones. That is another reason to read what the number does and does not measure.

What South African players can take from it

First, a ranking is not a recommendation. Being in the biggest group does not make gambling a good idea, and it does not make any particular site safe. Gambling is entertainment with real risk, and most people lose over time.

Second, set limits before you play. Decide a monthly amount you can afford to lose without touching rent, food, school fees or loan repayments, and keep to it. Never fund play with borrowed money or grant money. If you want help or a break, our responsible gambling page lists tools and support options, and blocking tools that stop gambling sites and apps on your own phone are worth setting up if you feel your play is slipping.

Third, check the licence. If a site says it is licensed, find the regulator's own register and confirm it. Be wary of any operator that promises certainty of winning, asks you to pay to withdraw, or pushes you to keep depositing after a loss.

Fourth, treat the headline as a prompt to look at your own habits. If you have visited a betting app several times this month, ask what you got from it and what it cost. Note the time as well as the money, since late night sessions and chasing losses are common warning signs. A short break, a deposit limit or a self-exclusion costs nothing and can be undone later if you decide to.

Finally, watch the next releases. Participation figures, SARB data and NGB statistics will all be updated, and any one of them could move the story. We will update our own pages when a confirmed change affects South African players.

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