South Africa Gaming Licence

South Africa has no national gambling licence for operators, and it has no licence at all for an online casino. Section 11 of the National Gambling Act 2004 says a person must not engage in or make available an interactive game except as authorised by that Act or another national law. Parliament passed an amendment in 2008 to regulate interactive gambling, and National Treasury wrote in November 2025 that it has not yet been implemented. What is lawful online is betting. The National Gambling Board puts it in two lines on its own site: online gambling is not legal, and online betting is legal with a licensed South African bookmaker.

Licences come from the provinces. Each of the nine provincial licensing authorities has exclusive jurisdiction in its own province to investigate applicants and issue licences for casinos, racing, gambling and wagering, and the National Gambling Board evaluates how they perform. The four lawful modes are casinos, bingo, betting and limited payout machines. For an online operator the relevant licence is the bookmaker licence: the Act defines a bookmaker as a person who lays fixed-odds or open bets with members of the public. The board's list of verified operators, updated on 13 October 2026, carries 552 bookmaker entries across all nine provinces.

The money has already moved online. The National Gambling Board's audited statistics for the year to 31 March 2025 put gross gambling revenue at R74.5 billion. Betting made up R52.0 billion of it, 69.8%, and online betting alone R44.5 billion, 59.7% of the national total. Two provinces report most of it: licence holders in the Western Cape account for 31.0% of national revenue and those in Mpumalanga for 29.9%, ahead of Gauteng on 18.1%.

The Western Cape shows how an application works, and its figures are public. A bookmaker licence there goes only to a South African company or close corporation of good financial standing whose owners and managers are fit and proper. The licence names the premises the business runs from, and each of them needs a premises licence of its own. From 1 April 2026 a bookmaker licence costs R16,343 to apply for, with a R31,982 deposit towards the board's investigation, and then R3,278 a year in licence fees and R13,088 a year in investigation fees. The application is advertised in the gazette and in English, Afrikaans and local publications, the public has 21 days to object, and the board can call a public hearing. Every board must also weigh the applicant's commitments on black economic empowerment and on problem gambling, and it reviews them every year after the licence is issued.

A bookmaker licence is one of several. The same Western Cape schedule sets the new-application fee at R654,017 for a casino operator licence, R327,009 for a totalisator operator licence and R16,343 for a manufacturer or a distributor of gambling equipment. The bookmaker licence is the one an online betting brand applies for.

Betting tax is provincial as well. In the Western Cape the bookmaker collects a 3% tax and a 3% betting levy on winning bets and pays both over with a weekly return, due by Thursday. Gauteng taxes the bookmaker's own margin: 6.5% of gross betting revenue on everything except horse racing, plus a 1% levy for its Sports Development Fund. Company income tax of 27% applies in every province.

Where betting ends and casino gaming begins is the live question, and the regulators do not answer it the same way. On 21 October 2025 the Supreme Court of Appeal held that bookmakers licensed in Gauteng may not offer fixed-odds bets on the outcome of a casino game such as roulette. Two weeks later the Western Cape board stated that the judgment has no bearing on its own bookmakers or on the contingencies it has approved, because its legislation differs from Gauteng's. On 27 February 2026 the National Gambling Board announced a notice to all nine provincial authorities: remote gambling servers are not lawful gambling systems, they can no longer be certified against the national standard, and the provinces should stop approving them and require a certified wagering system instead. The South African Bookmakers' Association disputes that reading of the Act. A new entrant builds on a sportsbook and clears anything casino-like with its provincial board in writing first.

Two changes are pending and neither is law. National Treasury published a discussion paper on 25 November 2025 proposing a national tax of 20% of gross gambling revenue on online betting, on top of provincial taxes, which by its own estimate would bring the combined rate to between 26% and 29%. Comments closed on 27 February 2026. The Remote Gambling Bill, a private member's bill introduced in April 2024, lapsed in the National Assembly on 21 May 2024. We track both and update this page when either moves.