Mobile Casinos in South Africa - November 2024

Mobile Casinos in South Africa

Since online gambling is only legal in the form of sports betting in South Africa, therefore there are no local mobile casinos either. South African players wishing to gamble through their portable devices must access offshore casinos. Although in theory this is punishable by fines and even imprisonment, no one has been prosecuted for such activities. Over half of the mobile subscribers are Vodacom clients, while another third use the services of local company MTN. Cell C customers account for under 15% of the market.  Mobile penetration stood at a nominal 138% at the beginning of 2013. When looking at the number of active individual subscriptions the figure is actually only 66%. Nearly half of those subscribers use smartphones, tablets or both. The most popular platforms by far are Blackberry and Android, found on two thirds of the devices. By contrast iOS powers less than 5% of them. With large data package subscriptions available from R59 (USD 6.5), a large number of South African players have the technical means to frequent foreign casinos while awaiting the implementation of government’s long-promised legalization plans.