South Africa’s gambling industry is issuing more than 3,000 licences a year, with the number of operators, particularly bookmakers, expanding sharply in recent years, raising concerns about gaps in enforcement and whether licensed operators are being adequately monitored.
This emerges from a written parliamentary reply to Rise Mzansi MP Makashule Gana, which shows 3,135 licences were issued to gambling and betting operators in 2024/2025, following 3,174 in 2023/2024 and 3,186 in 2022/2023.
Annual licence volumes have remained consistently high:
- 2018/2019: 2,930
- 2019/2020: 3,082
- 2020/2021: 2,887
- 2021/2022: 2,976
- 2022/2023: 3,186
- 2023/2024: 3,174
- 2024/2025: 3,135
Most licences relate to limited payout machine (LPM) site operators and bookmakers, with provinces continuing to issue approvals at scale. Gauteng recorded 753 licences in 2024/2025, followed by KwaZulu-Natal (596) and the Western Cape (549).
However, it is the growth in bookmaker licences that has drawn particular concern.
In a letter to trade, industry and competition minister Parks Tau, Gana said South Africa now has more than 400 registered bookmakers, significantly higher than international peers. He noted that the country has double the number of bookmakers as Australia, more than five times as many as Brazil, and 15 times as many as Denmark.
The number of bookmakers has risen from 288 in 2020 to 402 in 2025, representing growth of about 40%, outpacing expansion in other gambling segments.
Gana also pointed to sharp increases at the provincial level, with bookmaker numbers more than doubling over five years in Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape, North West and the Free State.
He raised concern that the rapid expansion of online betting — much of which stems from provincially issued bookmaker licences — may not be matched by effective oversight and enforcement.
Provincial authorities are responsible for licensing and monitoring operators, but Gana argued that the current system does not adequately account for online gambling activity that operates across provincial boundaries, potentially creating gaps in supervision and compliance.
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He called for an immediate moratorium on new bookmaker licences, the introduction of a national licensing framework for online operators, and a review of existing licensing requirements to align South Africa with international best practice.
“We cannot allow the pursuit of profit to outpace our ability to regulate and protect the South African public,” Gana said.
The parliamentary reply shows that while casino licences remain tightly capped in provinces, the expansion of LPM site operators and bookmakers continues to drive overall licence volumes, raising broader questions about the state’s ability to enforce compliance in a rapidly growing and increasingly digital market.
Separate data provided in reply to a question from Rise Mzansi MP Songezo Zibi to the police minister points to potential gaps in enforcement capacity.
The reply shows that just 36 illegal online gambling cases were reported to the SAPS over the past five financial years, resulting in 39 arrests and 22 convictions.
Over the same period, a total of 32,938 cases of illegal gambling were recorded, of which 99.9% related to land-based operations, highlighting the limited number of detected online cases.
The police also identified structural challenges in tackling online gambling, noting that websites can easily be created and removed, complicating enforcement, while some cases collapsed due to legal challenges about search warrants.
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