National Gambling Regulator Wrestles with Offshore Casinos' Explosion

28 October 2026

A decade and a half after the National Gambling Act first prohibited all but online sports betting, South Africa's gambling regulator is stepping up its campaign against rampant offshore gambling. The National Gambling Board (NGB) has intensified efforts against unlicensed gaming platforms, warning that these sites pose a host of risks from fraud and unfair practices to lack of recourse for consumer disputes.

The NGB says its campaign has been prompted partly by growing offshore activity. A 2024 study commissioned by the South African Bookmakers' Association estimated that illegal operators account for 62% of online gambling in South Africa, draining over R50-billion in gross revenue annually.

The Act, which was promulgated in 2004 and complemented by the nine Provincial Gambling Acts, remains the legal backbone of South Africa's gambling industry. Its provisions have been meticulously enforced to ensure that only online betting through licensed bookmakers in the country, such as sports and horse racing betting, is allowed.

However, the NGB says this has not prevented offshore and locally hosted illegal online gambling platforms from thriving, often at the expense of the regulated sector and of player protection.

Under the law, an "interactive game" – one played or made available via an online electronic agent over the internet – is defined as an unauthorized gambling game and thus unlawful. This includes a wide range of formats, from slots to poker websites. The "gambling" also includes historical gambling options that are part of the broader spectrum of interactive games prohibited by South African gambling laws.

This has pushed the NGB to work closely with other authorities, both at home and abroad, to rein in activity the operator says posed a risk to consumer welfare. In 2026, the NGB began an extensive campaign of publishing cease-and-desist letters to offending operators. In a written submission to Parliament, the regulator said it was exploring IP blocking in conjunction with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation and the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa.

The NGB collaborated with social media giants to cut off unlicensed gaming platforms' access to their platforms. Public-facing materials say the board is concentrating on these technical interventions because of the complexities of tracing financial flows and working across jurisdictions.

A 2025 media release said the NGB was working with regulators in key areas, such as Gibraltar, the Philippines, and Malta, which it said were major sources of illegal offshore gaming platforms. This goal was reaffirmed in a June 2026 report presented to Parliament, three months after the NGB issued a tender for a service provider to monitor, block, track, and report illegal online gambling websites.

The tender notice included a caveat that the platform must be capable of detecting resurging illegal platforms, which often return when they have been blocked. The board provided another significant public warning around operators who could appear legitimate but did not hold a licence in South Africa.

This is the backdrop to a recent series of detailed public warnings from the regulator urging players to verify the licensing status of gambling platforms they engage with. The regulator says consumers should ensure their gambling operator is displaying a valid local licence and confirm on the board's verified operators page before participating. The distinction is an important one - bookmakers with a valid, displayed licence can offer online sports or horse-racing betting, but nothing else.

This deepening drive against illegal gaming comes as domestic land-based operators say the rise of offshore platforms is hurting their business. Complications around tracing financial flows from a regulated to an unregulated market are key limiting factors for the regulator in its enforcement. Nonetheless, it appears to be ramping up on several fronts, pushing into both foreign collaborations and into South Africa, with emphasis on information provision to consumers.

One open question remains: whether the NGB has linked the reinforcement of this campaign to a confirmation of South Africa's complaints surge, or whether this concluded before the regulator's statement.