July was the month South Africa’s gambling regulator stopped talking about blocking illegal sites and started shopping for someone to do it. The internet industry pushed back within 48 hours, bookmakers opened a second front against prediction markets, and a Supreme Court of Appeal judgement quietly ended a seven-year fight over Gauteng racing levies.
Regulation and Legal
The NGB Goes Looking for a Blocking Solution
The National Gambling Board issued an expression of interest on 30 June for a provider to supply a monitoring, tracking, blocking and reporting solution aimed at illicit online gambling, then published an erratum amending that EOI on 17 July. The tender, numbered NGB 01/2026_ED, closes on 7 August 2026.
This is the enforcement arm of a push that has been building all year. The regulator had already launched its Verified Gambling Operators portal earlier in 2026, giving the public a list of licensed operators to verify against.
The numbers behind the drive are contested but large. Business Day reported on 6 July that industry research puts illegal platforms at roughly 62% of online gambling activity, attracting around 16 million South Africans and more than R50 billion in gross gambling revenue a year. Those figures come from the industry rather than the regulator, so treat them as an estimate from an interested party.
For players, nothing changes yet. A blocking system that does not exist cannot block anything, and the appointment process has not started.
Internet Providers Say Not So Fast
The Internet Service Providers’ Association published a position paper on 2 July setting out five safeguards it wants attached to any website-blocking regime, arguing that DNS blocking, IP address blocking and deep packet inspection each carry technical limitations. ISPA chair Sasha Booth-Beharilal said any disruption of internet services should happen only within a clear legislative framework that weighs the right to communicate against the harm of the content in question.
ISPA also argued that providers should not have to rebuild their networks to comply, and that the cost of blocking orders should not fall on them alone. The association is not opposed to blocking in principle. It wants a law behind it, courts involved, and someone else paying.
The South African Bookmakers Association weighed in on the other side. SABA told Business Day on 7 July that it backs the NGB’s enforcement drive and wants the Financial Intelligence Centre Act and the Reserve Bank brought in to stop banks, payment providers and crypto exchanges from processing transactions with illegal operators. That last point matters more to players than site blocking does, because payment-level enforcement is much harder to route around than a DNS block.
One uncomfortable detail surfaced in the same period. ITWeb reported that the NGB’s Verified Operators Web Portal had not been updated since 1 March, with SABA noting that newly licensed operators risk being disadvantaged by an outdated database.
Bookmakers Take Aim at Prediction Markets
SABA published a policy position paper on 27 July arguing that prediction markets let South Africans bet on political, economic and sporting outcomes outside the existing gambling framework, and that they should be treated as illegal offshore operators until dedicated laws exist. The paper followed a News24 report from 19 July that more than R700,000 had been wagered on the identity of Johannesburg’s next mayor via Polymarket.
SABA chief executive Sean Coleman described prediction markets as exchange betting products wearing a different label. The association cited an April study by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities that classed prediction markets as an emerging sports integrity problem. It said South Africa lacks the monitoring capability to detect manipulation.
Worth noting: SABA represents licensed bookmakers, who compete with these platforms. The integrity argument and the commercial argument point the same way here.
The Bill and the Ad Rules Are Still Coming
Early in the month, Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Parks Tau confirmed in a parliamentary reply that the National Gambling Policy Council has resolved to fast-track a new gambling Bill and has set up a Gambling Technical Committee to review the National Gambling Amendment Bill, 2018, with new advertising rules being developed alongside it. Tau also said the department has been examining the current Act since October 2025.
Context players should hold onto: the department told Parliament in February that it expected to publish norms and standards on gambling advertising, plus the advertising rules themselves, before July 2026. We could not find anything gazetted by the end of the month. The deadline appears to have slipped.
Supreme Court of Appeal Closes the Gauteng Levy Case
On 3 July, the Supreme Court of Appeal handed down judgment in a long-running dispute between the Gauteng MEC for Economic Development and the Gauteng Gambling Board on one side, and Phumelela Gaming and Leisure (in business rescue) and 4Racing on the other.
The court dismissed the appellants’ application for condonation and reinstatement of a lapsed appeal, with costs, and struck the matter from the roll. The dispute concerned a 2019 amendment to Regulation 276 of the Gauteng Gambling Regulations that removed the totalisator licence holder’s share of the betting levy. The High Court had already reviewed and set that amendment aside and ordered payment of the levy to Phumelela and 4Racing for the relevant periods; the appellants argued that failure to reinstate it would leave the province liable for more than R600 million.
The appeal failed on procedure rather than substance. The court found the explanation for the delay unacceptable and the breach of the rules flagrant, and declined to assess the merits at all. Practical effect: the High Court order stands.
Operators and Industry
The Durban July ran on 4 July at Greyville. The 130th running carried a record R10 million purse, with R6 million to the winning connections, contested by a capacity field of 18 runners. Tote operator TAB declared a R15 million Pick 6 pool, a Hong Kong World Pool on the feature and a R10 million Quartet offer, with operators expecting more than R25 million in wagers across the day.
Beyond racing, July was quiet on the corporate side. No major listed-operator results, mergers or licence transfers landed in the month.
Players and Payments
The month’s most significant player-side story was data, not policy. The Old Mutual Savings and Investment Monitor 2026, reported at the end of July, found that the share of working South Africans who said gambling had caused them financial difficulty rose from 12% in 2025 to 22% in 2026, and that among gamblers themselves the figure went from 24% to 41%. More than half of gamblers surveyed, 53%, said they started looking for a way to make extra money, rising to 61% among those earning between R8,000 and R14,999 a month.
The survey covered 18-to 65-year-olds earning R8,000 or more a month, and found sports betting the most common form at 63% of gamblers, followed by casino slots at 46% and the lottery at 42%. It is a self-reported survey from a financial services firm, so read it as a directional signal rather than a clinical measure. The direction is clear enough.
For scale, National Gambling Board audited figures for 2024/25 show gross gambling revenue of R74.5 billion and total turnover of R1.5 trillion, with betting accounting for R52.0 billion of GGR and R1.13 trillion of turnover.
Payments were quiet this month. No changes to 1Voucher, Ozow, Capitec Pay, PayShap or card processing that we could verify.
If gambling has stopped being fun for you, the South African Responsible Gambling Foundation runs a free 24-hour counselling line on 0800 006 008.
Games and Content
Playson announced on 20 July that it had partnered with Hollywoodbets to roll out a selection of its slot titles to players in South Africa’s regulated market.
Booming Games marked two years in the market on 14 July, saying it has more than 145 titles tested, approved and live in Mpumalanga, Western Cape and Eastern Cape, and that it aims to be recognised as the market’s leading games provider within one to two years. The supplier also pointed to a partnership with World Sports Betting announced the previous month.
Both are supplier announcements rather than independently verified market share, but the pattern is consistent: international studios keep certifying content province by province rather than waiting for a national framework.
What to Watch in August
The NGB’s expression of interest for a blocking solution closes on 7 August. Whether the board appoints anyone, and how quickly, is the single most concrete thing on the calendar.
Also outstanding, with no confirmed dates: the gambling advertising norms, standards and regulations the department said it would publish before July; draft legislation on the proposed 20% national online gambling tax, which has been pending since public comment closed earlier in the year; and the new comprehensive gambling Bill the National Gambling Policy Council resolved to fast-track. None of these has a published timetable, so treat any particular date you see elsewhere with suspicion.