South Africa Seeks Site Blocks in Offshore Casino Crackdown
The National Gambling Board (NGB) has asked the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies to assist with blocking access to offshore gambling sites. The request was outlined before Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Trade, Industry, and Competition on 24 June 2026.
The regulator said that offshore operators continue to target customers from South Africa despite the fact that interactive gambling is illegal under national law, except for licensed online sports betting.
NGB Turns to Communications Officials
The NGB identified a number of offshore licensing jurisdictions as areas of concern. Among these, it identified Curaçao, the Philippines, Gibraltar, and Malta as jurisdictions associated with gambling operators targeting South Africans.
The NGB has also reached out to regulators in Curaçao, Gibraltar, and Malta. The NGB said it had requested them to prevent their licensees from operating in South Africa illegally. It has issued cease and desist letters to operators it says are breaching local rules.
Blocking Moves Beyond the Regulator
The board aims to develop an enforcement network of a larger scope. It claimed that it was collaborating with the South African Police Service, provincial gambling regulators, Google, Meta, and ICASA.
The purpose is to curb access to gambling portals that do not have licenses and lower their visibility on the internet. One of the methods suggested by the board includes the development of a blocking mechanism against illegal gambling websites.
Instead of relying only on warning letters and legal notices, the regulator is now looking at website access, platform visibility, and online advertising. That reflects how offshore casino sites operate: they can change domains, buy traffic, and reach players through affiliates or influencers.
Casino-Style Products Fuel the Dispute
This legal controversy is also homegrown. According to the NGB, any form of interactive gambling in South Africa is illegal, apart from the online sports betting conducted via licenses. However, several major betting firms contend that some forms of casino-style products available under bookmaker licenses must be considered as outcome betting.
That distinction has become one of the main pressure points in the market. As the regulator says, some types of products enable players to initiate and take part in gameplay, which places them outside traditional contingency betting.
Some of the operators in the broader debate include Hollywoodbets, Betway, SportingBet, Sunbet, and SuperSportBet. Their stance is that customers are betting on outcomes and not taking part in illegal interactive gambling.
Market Growth Raises the Stakes
The NGB indicated that South Africans wagered R1.5 trillion in 2024/25, up from R1.14 trillion a year earlier. Gross gambling revenue rose 26.2% to about R75 billion.
Betting revenue accounted for R52.3 billion, or around 70% of gross gambling revenue. Some of the provinces that benefited most from the growth include the Western Cape, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, and KwaZulu-Natal.
The figures show why enforcement is politically difficult. Betting now brings in large provincial revenue, while the national regulator says some casino-style products remain outside the law.
Expert View
South Africa’s next enforcement test will be consistency. Blocking offshore sites may slow illegal access, but it will not settle the deeper dispute over casino-style products sold through betting licences. Unless national and provincial bodies apply the same reading of the law, operators will continue to work around the grey areas.