Online Gambling Hurdles in South Africa

April 14, 2008

Just last week South Africa announced that they were considering making online gambling legal in their country. They were looking at a bill that would change the status of online gambling in their country, and making it and online poker legal again was a main issue of their meetings.

However, now it seems that the road to online gambling is paved with many roadblocks. There have been proposed changes to the online gambling bill, and they are currently being discussed. One group is against advertising online gambling.

The group has added a provision on the bill that would make advertising online gambling illegal. The National Gambling Amendment Bill would make online gambling legal, but the advertising of it not. It would lift the ban on online gambling and regulate it instead of making it illegal – but advertising is a big part of that industry.

The Veteran African National Congress lawyer Ben Turok says that “says the National Assembly’s trade and industry committee last month took a decision not to proceed with the Bill” as they were afraid that it was promoting online gambling to children and under age peoples. They say that they are opposed to young people participating in online gambling and therefore they cannot support the bill.

However, many want to see the bill explored and passed. They say that by adding on the advertising ban they are simply trying to keep the bill from being passed. With gambling bringing in more than R14 billion a year, it is too much money to simply walk away from.




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