Chapter 2: Market overviews
Overview
Thanks to increasing mobile and broadband penetration, Africa is set to beat global average growth rates over the coming years when it comes to digital gaming.
“ Africa has been a real eye-opener to me in 2015,” says Simon Burrell, Head of Business Development, Editec( UK), who has worked in digital gaming across many continents.“ Whilst digital does exist in sports betting terms, this is a very strong retail continent with only a few countries enabling‘ digital’ distribution. Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Zambia all have very active and competitive sports betting markets with shops, kiosks and terminals abounding. The technological infrastructure in these countries is driven by the telecom operators and 3G coverage is extensive – unsurprisingly, these are the African territories where digital sports betting is growing( if not yet thriving).
“ There are rumoured to be in excess of 1,000 online operators in Nigeria, certainly in terms of Ghana and Kenya, there are 20 + licensed operators through retail and online, Zambia with only a handful less.
“ Digital as we perceive it is unlikely to happen, the move here involves a much greater mobile stage. Kenya has recently seen a huge boom in SMS betting – something launched [ unsuccessfully ] in the UK back in 2007-08 – the success rate in the Kenyan environment is substantially different as the high majority of handsets in Africa are not smartphones but old style feature models which support text and the first mobile internet from 14 years ago – WAP! [ In Kenya, the first regulated online gambling website was launched in 2013.]
“ Connectivity will improve in many African countries, and quickly – the cost of handsets for smartphones is diminishing too – however, until we see the network providers reducing the cost of data, digital gaming and sports betting will be limited in their growth – remember though that even that limited growth within a population of over 1bn, could yet be seismic to anything previously seen in Europe, Asia, North America or Australia!”
South Africa
Country South Africa
Most popular sports Football, cricket, rugby, boxing
Football is the most popular sport in South Africa and its national football team is nicknamed Bafana Bafana( meaning‘ The Boys’). South Africa hosted a successful 2010 FIFA World Cup- the first one ever held in Africa – spending over $ 30bn on facilities and infrastructure. Other popular sports in the country include: cricket( which is the second most popular sport in South Africa), rugby union, boxing, hockey, surfing and athletics.
From the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, the only legal form of gambling in South Africa was horseracing. It is still very popular at present – there are 10 tracks around South Africa where horseracing events take place.
Over the past decade South Africa’ s gaming industry has grown into reasonable size representing R24bn in gross gambling revenue( GGR) in the 2014 financial year. It is managed and operated by around 10 business enterprises as well as nine Provincial Gambling Boards and the country’ s National Gambling Board( NGB). Over the last few years, sports betting has been increasing its share of the total gaming pie in South Africa.
Digital Sports Betting 75