LEGALISATION OF INTERNET GAMBLING URGED BY SOUTH AFRICAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Gambling head calls it an almost unstoppable phenomenon.

The good news according to the South African Financial Mail is that a special investigative committee was established by the country’s national Gambling Board.  It's job was to review Internet gambling and to make suggestions regarding how to deal with it.  It has recommended that online Internet gambling be legalized.

As a part of its work the committee traveled and met with many professionals.  One of its advisers was eCOGRA CEO, Andrew Beveridge.

In South Africa gambling on the Internet is currently illegal.  Raids have actually been performed, particularly where the authorities have been particularly dedicated to enforcing the law in the Eastern Cape Province.

When Mandisi Mpahlwa the minister of trade & industry, accepts the recommendations of the national gambling board, online gambling will become legal. The board has already recommend legalization of Internet online gambling in a recent report.

At any rate, online gambling in SA, which has a population of over 42 million, remains the choice of only a relative few - those who have online access to the Internet. It was reported in the Financial Mail that a fixed telephone lines exists in only one in 10 households and, in the three months ending with September, of the 361 calls that were made to a hotline that is operated by the national responsible gambling programme, there were only two that were related to Internet gambling.

The country possesses a highly complicated communication and IT infrastructure and it is also home to many of the industry's leading entrepreneurs. There is a widespread and growing use of cell phones.

SA companies will be able to profit from an industry that is enjoying rapid expansion, if Mpahlwa decides to legalize Internet gambling. In 2001, the industry was worth US$3 billion/year.  And according to the research firm Christiansen Capital Advisors, by 2004 it had grown to more than $8.2 billion/year.  By 2010 the market is expected to triple and reach almost $25 billion/year.

Thibedi Majake who is CEO of the National gambling board is reported as saying there was actually very little choice other than to propose that online gambling be legalized.  He calls it an unstoppable phenomenon, admitting that SA punters are already betting online, and there is very little that can be done to stop them.

Several issues, according to the board, will be addressed by legalization of online gambling.  This will give legal protection to local gamblers.  In turn it may help to prevent the criminal influences in the industry; and it will encourage the expansion of an interactive gambling industry in SA.

Legalization could take place very quickly if Mpahlwa gives permission. Majake has said that no new gambling legislation should be necessary. Only new regulations to govern it would be required.
 
Betfair, the UK-based group, is simply one international organization said to be interested in the South African market. Richard Rumbelow, Betfair SA public affairs manager, is reported as saying that the board's recommendations are quite fair and reasonable and go quite a way to attracting the desirable type of international gambling company that would invest in SA.

Given South Africa's rapidly expanding call-centre infrastructure, Majake and Rumbelow both say that the country is in a good position to make back-office support available for Internet gambling operators who may want to set up operations here. Coupled with the board's recommendations, this could help create SA as one of the foremost destinations for Internet gambling.

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