It's Coming Soon To South Africa, Both Regulations And Licensing, But Nothing as of Yet

Many online gambling companies are looking to South Africa, with its first world communications and banking infrastructure along with its potential for low operational costs, to remain on the agenda as a country that will be liberalizing it's anti-online gambling laws in the coming future.

In South Africa at the current time, irregardless of an in-depth study of the worldwide industry and its implications for the country, and despite some indications that licensing and regulation is by far the best was for the South African government to follow, in South Africa, it is currently illegal to gamble via the Internet, either to play or to operate.

Last year in Pretoria, the High Court ruled that all those participating in online gambling, or helping in any way to facilitate it, could be fined up to R10-million (USD $ 1.4 million) or given a 10 year’s jail sentence, as reported by the Daily News.

Actually only a small share of the gambling in south Africa is represented by Online gambling, but this participation is growing rapidly, according to an article this week in the Cape Times.

The that does exist at the current time in regard to how much money is spent on online gambling, is that as a general gambling activity there have been increases in participation throughout South Africa. According to a national statistics database, gross gambling revenues are up by 16 percent from R9,9-billion in 2004/05 to R11,5-billion in 2005/06.

In recent months the South African government has been broadly consulting on, as both a player service, and as a possible source of overseas revenues being derived from licensed operations located in South African and under strict regulation, the beginning of both licensed and regulated Internet gambling. 

Precautions would be taken against the possibilities of both addictive gambling practices and the advent of underage gambling through necessary regulations which would be required of companies which would need to be registered and licensed in South Africa. The gambling sites of companies would have to include information on responsible gambling in order for the companies to obtain a licence. This also applies to advertising and the necessity of including appropriate sections and links that would assure game fairness, which would also probably be required.

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