South Africa’s gambling industry has undergone a seismic shift over the past two decades. Once limited to casinos and the National Lottery, the sector exploded in scale and accessibility following the 2004 National Gambling Act, which legalised sports betting beyond horse racing and laid the groundwork for online gambling.
Today, gambling is deeply woven into South African consumer behaviour, with the industry hitting R1.14 trillion in turnover in 2023/2024—and sports betting alone contributing R761 billion, or 66.6% of the total market.
But just how embedded is gambling in South African spending habits? Our recently improved dataset now features more than 640 000 unique South Africans and continues to grow everyday. Within this dataset, a staggering 204 289 unique individuals placed deposits with an online betting company between August 2023 and January 2025—accounting for nearly 30% of all users analysed.
And that’s likely an underestimate, as it excludes voucher-based deposits (such as FNB’s 1voucher system) and cash deposits at branded kiosks. As our dataset comprises roughly 2% of all South Africans with bank accounts, seeing 30% of these active in the gambling space could mean as much as 10 million South Africans have participated in the industry.
With such a significant portion of the population engaged in online betting, the question isn’t just how much money is being wagered but rather who is betting, where they are betting, and how engaging with betting affects their overall spending decisions.
This month, we analyse deposit transactions across major gambling providers and the National Lottery, breaking down the trends, demographics, and behavioural shifts shaping South Africa’s growing gambling economy.
The Growth: Gambling on the Rise
Our data reveals that the gambling sector continues to expand at an exceptional pace. Looking at the differences between December 2023 and December 2024, we find that the 10 largest online bookmakers recorded a 32% year-on-year growth rate in deposit value and an exceptional 43% year-on-year growth rate in total deposits. For comparison, the National Lottery saw a 13% year-on-year growth rate in total deposits over the same period.
The Market Players: Who’s Playing and How Much Are They Spending?
From the graph below, it’s evident that the National Lottery is still the dominant way in which South Africans gamble, with more than 33% of gamblers in our dataset having bought at least one Lotto ticket within the analysis timeframe. This means that they have 48% more unique customers in our dataset than the closest online gambling competitor - Betway - who managed to capture the spend of almost 23% of all unique gamblers in our dataset. Hollywoodbets closes out the top three, with a 21.7% market share.
However, when looking at the total number of deposit transactions made, a very different picture emerges. The National Lottery only accounts for 19.2% of all deposit volumes over the period of analysis. Hollywoodbets is the dominant player by some distance - managing to capture an incredible 40% of all transactions made over the period of analysis. Betway trails its biggest competitor by some distance, capturing just over 24% of the market by deposit volume.
However, it should be noted that National Lottery players aren’t big gamblers. Our data reveals that, despite having one of the highest average monthly incomes (almost R21 000), the average National Lottery player only bets just R48.85 per deposit. This is by far the smallest average deposit size of all the merchants analysed. The next smallest average deposit size was Easybet at R146.22 (almost 3 times the size of the National Lottery). National Lottery players also deposit significantly less frequently than the players at the major online bookmakers.
Looking at this data, it becomes apparent that the Lotto players are more casual in their engagement—tending to wager small, infrequent amounts as opposed to more frequent and larger deposits seen at the online bookmakers. That being said, a big growth opportunity for gambling providers could be converting casual National Lottery players into more active gamblers.
Looking more specifically at the online bookmakers themselves, it becomes clear that there is segmentation of customer bases along the lines of income. SunBet - who has the highest income earning average customer at R21 229 - has positioned itself as a platform for high-rollers, SunBet are likely converting existing casino customers into online sports bettors. Their customers’ deposit sizes are significantly higher than those of any of the other bookmakers analysed, hinting that traditional casino gamblers are transitioning onto digital betting platforms with substantial stakes.
This notion of SunBet attracting larger, more risk-seeking punters is further cemented when looking at the relationship between how its average (mean) player bets on a monthly basis relative to its median player. You can see from the graph below that SunBet’s average customer bets more on a monthly basis (R3 111) than any other bookmaker’s average player. However, the median spend at SunBet is significantly lower at R200 - which places it in the middle of the pack of the merchants analysed. This large divergence between the mean and median monthly spend suggests that SunBet have managed to capture the attention of serious punters whose large wager sizes have skewed the mean. The implication here is that SunBets currently makes the majority of its revenue from these larger ‘whale’-like players.
Unsurprisingly, the retention and continued loyalty of these players will be at the top of SunBet executives' minds, which may have led to the rollout of its Sun MVG Loyalty Programme. This programme allows online punters to earn points for betting and exchange these points for in-person experience rewards at one of the many Sun International’s casinos and hotels. Cleverly, this allows SunBet to leverage one of its true differentiators among its online bookmaker peers - its holding company’s brick-and-mortar hospitality offering.
Yesplay and Hollywoodbets, on the other hand, have firmly established themselves among earners who earn less than R16 000. These players tend to make smaller deposits but on a far more frequent basis than their higher-earning peers. However, this is where the similarities end—Hollywoodbets is the clear market leader in all aspects, whilst Yesplay is consistently toward the bottom end of the pack of the bookmakers analysed.
Hollywoodbets has the second highest mean spend per customer per month (R3 092) of all the bookmakers analysed. However, unlike SunBets, it enjoys the highest median spend of any of the bookmakers. In fact, Hollywoodbets’ median spend is 28% more than its closest peer on this metric - Lottostar. This suggests that there may be a structural difference between Hollywoodbets and the rest of the market as it appears to enjoy broad appeal by smaller and more prominent players alike. It is consistently best-in-class across the majority of metrics we analysed.
🎲 Curious how betting behaviour differs by income level, age group, and lifestyle — and what it reveals about broader South African spending habits?
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