How to Check a Bookmaker's Licence in South Africa

What a South African betting licence is 📜

The National Gambling Act defines a bookmaker as a person who lays fixed-odds or open bets with members of the public, and it says that no one may engage in, conduct or make available a gambling activity other than a licensed one, apart from narrow exceptions such as social gambling and informal bets. The licences themselves come from the provinces: the Act calls the issuer a provincial licensing authority, a body set up by provincial law to regulate casinos, racing, gambling or wagering.

The National Gambling Board does not license bookmakers. In its own words, the provincial licensing authorities "have sole legislative mandate to issue national and provincial gambling licences", while the Board oversees how they license and monitor licensees.

So the question to ask about any betting site is not "is it licensed?" but "which province licensed it, under which number, and does that province's board list it?" Whether the casino-style games some bookmakers carry are covered by a betting licence is a separate question, answered in our guide to South African gambling law.

Reading a licence certificate

Some bookmakers publish their certificate on their own site. Three details matter. What it licenses: a certificate for one betting shop's premises says nothing about the website, while some certificates name the approved web address. The dates: an expired certificate is not current proof. The holder: it should be the company named in the site's terms.

In our review data, a certificate on one bookmaker's own server covered a single branch and had expired; the certificate naming its website was a different licence from a different board, and that is the number we show.

Licences from outside South Africa

Some sites that take South African players hold a licence from Curacao or Anjouan, or state none at all. Those licences are not issued by a provincial licensing authority, so they are not South African licences. A dispute with such a site goes to its own regulator abroad, if anywhere; it does not reach a provincial board.

We never call such a brand legal. Where a brand we cover has no South African licence, its review says so in plain words and names the licence it does hold, or says that its own site states none.

Licences of the bookmakers we cover

This table lists the bookmakers whose sports menu we have read, with where each one is licensed and the sports it lists. The full licence line with the number and the board's name is in each review; all brands are compared on [our casinos page](/casinos/).

Each value is what the operator states on its own site or App Store listing, the same as in its review; "-" means we could not read it. We have not deposited or withdrawn with them. The order follows how we rate.

How the licence counts in our ranking

The licence is the anchor of every bookmaker's score on this site: it decides how far a complaint can travel and whether the claim can be checked. How we rate gives the full formula. The betting hub shows where each bookmaker is licensed, and each review gives the full licence line it states, so you can repeat the check above yourself.