Legalising online gambling without consumer safeguards risks embedding harm in SA households

April is Financial Literacy Month in SA, a moment meant to empower citizens to make sound financial decisions. Yet it arrives against a troubling backdrop: a surge in online gambling that is quietly eroding the financial resilience of the very households financial education seeks to protect.

A recent submission to the Portfolio Committee of the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) on the Remote Gambling Bill (B11–2024) makes a stark point: SA is on the cusp of legalising and expanding an online gambling market without putting in place the safeguards that other countries including prominent emerging markets like India, the Philippines and Brazil, now consider essential.

The result, if left unchanged, will not be a modern, well-regulated industry. It will be a system that legalises access while outsourcing the social costs.

A booming market, a missing safety net

Online gambling is no longer a niche activity. It now dominates SA’s gambling landscape, with rapid growth driven by mobile access and aggressive marketing. The social consequences are already visible: students gambling their allowances, low-income households spending disproportionate shares of income, and rising demand for addiction support services.

Yet the current bill reads less like a public health framework and more like a licensing regime. It enables operators to enter the market but does little to ensure they operate responsibly.

There is no statutory duty of care. No mandatory affordability checks. No real-time monitoring of harmful behaviour. No national self-exclusion system. And critically, almost no meaningful limits on advertising.

This places SA behind developed markets like the UK, the Netherlands and Australia, but also peers in the Global South.

What emerging markets are already doing differently

Consider India. Its 2025 online gaming law takes an interventionist stance, including the power to block unlawful platforms, prohibit payment processing for illegal gambling, and restrict advertising that induces participation. Even where India opts for prohibition in certain categories, its regulatory toolkit, especially around enforcement, is robust.

In the Philippines, the regulator Pagcor enforces a detailed Responsible Gaming Code of Practice. This includes mandatory player monitoring, cross-platform exclusion systems, and strict controls on advertising and access. The emphasis is operational: not just rules on paper, but systems that work in practice.

Meanwhile, Brazil has embedded responsible gambling into its licensing regime. Operators must demonstrate compliance with advertising standards, consumer protection measures and anti-addiction policies before they are allowed to operate. Advertising is permitted, but tightly governed, especially where vulnerable groups are concerned.

Across all three, a pattern emerges: regulation is proactive, data-driven, and explicitly designed to reduce harm, not merely to legitimise the market.

SA’s bill, by contrast, assumes harm will be managed after the fact.

The advertising blind spot

Nowhere is this gap more visible than in advertising.

The bill permits widespread gambling promotion, including sports sponsorships, with minimal restriction. This stands in direct contrast to global trends and, increasingly, common sense.

Take Australia, where recent reforms have introduced strict limits: caps on TV ads, bans during live sports, restrictions on radio timing, and critically a prohibition on celebrities and athletes promoting gambling.

This last point matters deeply in SA. Rugby and soccer players are routinely used to market betting platforms, normalising gambling among young fans and lending credibility to products that carry significant financial risk.

When admired athletes become the face of gambling, it’s hard for financial literacy to compete with that kind of influence.

A regressive burden

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the current trajectory is who bears the cost.

Evidence shows that lower-income households spend a far higher proportion of their income on gambling than wealthier groups. This makes online gambling not just a public health issue, but a regressive economic force, one that extracts resources from those least able to afford it.

A narrow window to get this right

The lesson from international experience is clear: it is far easier to build safeguards into a system from the outset than to retrofit them after harm becomes entrenched.

The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition’s submission outlines practical, achievable reforms that have already been implemented elsewhere. These include a national self-exclusion register, stronger enforcement powers (such as payment and ISP blocking), mandatory data sharing, and clear limits on advertising and sponsorship.

None of these measures would prevent the growth of a legal market. They would simply ensure that growth does not come at the expense of South African households.

Financial literacy needs structural support

Financial Literacy Month is often framed around individual responsibility: budgeting better, saving more, avoiding debt. But financial literacy alone cannot offset systemic risk.

When gambling is aggressively marketed, frictionless to access, and weakly regulated, even financially literate individuals can be drawn into harmful patterns. The environment matters as much as the education.

If SA is serious about financial inclusion and resilience, it must recognise that consumer protection is not a constraint on growth – it is a prerequisite for sustainable growth.

The Remote Gambling Bill presents a choice: to build a market that is preventative and protective, or one that is reactive and costly.

Right now, it is leaning toward the latter. DM