More than half of online gamblers in a survey said they sacrificed essentials to fund betting and almost a third had borrowed money to gamble.
This, even as an international study shows operators are increasingly deploying artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and intervene with at-risk players.
A recent report from Yazi, an AI-powered survey platform, found widespread signs that gambling causes financial harm among South African online gamblers, with 29% of more than 1 000 respondents reporting they had borrowed money to gamble and 57% saying they had sacrificed essentials to fund betting.
Yazi surveyed 1 373 people on 14 and 15 May, achieving a 75% completion rate.
“The harms are not theoretical. They are an airtime top-up missed, a R200 transport stake lost on slots, a rent payment chased into one more leg of a soccer slip, a SASSA grant spent at midnight,” says Yazi in its 2026 South African Gambling Impact Study.
Yazi says gambling can be difficult to measure accurately because respondents may under-report or abandon surveys altogether. “The findings suggest a category that has gone mainstream faster than its guardrails,” the report states.
Calculated trade-offs
Of those who responded to the survey, 72% had described themselves as in control even though 57% had chased same-day losses and 90% had gambled online in the 30 days before the survey went out.
The dominant trigger is the lure of an “easy win”, with just more than a third of respondents indicating this is true for them. “A uniquely South African finding emerges: gambling now sits next to airtime as the first line of household spend to be cut – and the first to be reached for when other lines run dry,” the report found.
“These are commercially-minded consumers making calculated trade-offs to fit a low-stakes leisure habit into already stretched household budgets. For them, online betting is not recklessness; it is entertainment, aspiration, and sometimes a quiet compromise against airtime, groceries, transport or rent,” says Yazi CEO Tim Treagus.
Treagus calls on industry stakeholders to intervene, noting that the report’s findings “are figures the category cannot ignore”. The real “question is how quickly operators, regulators, banks and brand-safety teams can meet consumers where they already are – with stake sizes, safeguards and interventions aligned to how people actually gamble”.
Follow the money
National Treasury’s November 2025 discussion paper on a proposed national gambling tax puts total gross gambling revenue – the difference between the amount played and winnings – at R74.5 billion in the 2024/25 financial year, a 25.6% increase from the previous year.
Much of this spending has shifted online. The South African Reserve Bank’s latest Quarterly Bulletin notes that the post-COVID-19 increase in betting was largely driven by a surge in online activity as lockdowns shut physical casinos. Online betting revenue accounted for 80.7% of total betting revenue in 2023/24 and 85.5% in 2024/25, SARB says.
Yazi says respondents say they gamble on a “small cluster of mainstream operators” such as licensed gambling sites Betway and Hollywoodbets.
Risky business
However, a South African Bookmakers Association (SABA) survey has found that two-thirds of South Africa’s R74.5 billion annual gross gambling revenue is being siphoned by illegal offshore online operators based in jurisdictions such as Curaçao, Malta, Gibraltar and the Philippines.
SABA says more than R50 billion in gross gambling revenue is diverted offshore each year, with an estimated 16 million South Africans having engaged with illegal platforms in the past year. The association has found that there are at least 49 unlicensed websites offering online gambling to South Africans, including 1xBet.com, 22BetCasino and 888 Casino.
“The majority of online gambling activity in South Africa is still taking place outside the regulated system. That means millions of consumers are exposed to operators who pay no local taxes, provide no consumer protection, and operate entirely outside of South African law,” says SABA CEO Sean Coleman.
Government authorities battle to shut down illegal sites because, each time one site is blocked, they simply change URLs in a game of whack-a-mole.
AI to the rescue
iGaming software development company SOFTSWISS says in its 2026 iGaming Trends Report that there has been increased regulation in the sector, spanning “stricter rules on advertising, to compulsory spending limits, and detailed reporting requirements on player activity”.
The report combines responses from more than 350 global iGaming professionals, with analysis of over 120 000 industry media headlines from 2024 to 2025.
SOFTSWISS founder Ivan Montik says: “The sector has moved into maturity, where efficiency, compliance and long-term sustainability temper expansion”. He adds that “what now matters is disciplined profitability, operational resilience and the ability to deliver durable player value. These are the practical tests of leadership.”
The report finds that AI and machine learning are increasingly being deployed to support responsible gambling, as operators face growing pressure to demonstrate that player-protection measures are effective.
The technology can identify potentially risky behaviour in real-time – including sudden increases in stake size, prolonged play and unusual betting patterns – enabling more precise responses that protect vulnerable players without unnecessarily disrupting the experience of lower-risk users.
“AI will be central to the future of responsible gambling. It makes player protection more precise by detecting harmful patterns early,” says Emilia Kurzynska, deputy team lead of the anti-fraud team at SOFTSWISS.
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