Responsible Gambling Awareness Week Highlights Need for Reform in South African Gambling Market

The international Responsible Gambling Awareness Week is an opportunity for countries to reflect on their own regulatory environments and gambling markets. For some countries, like South Africa, the international week is a useful tool for educating the public and for examining the regulatory progress that the country has made. With many other markets to compare to, the week allows for insightful comparisons that invite harsh self-criticism and inspire a desire to improve.

The importance of responsible gambling initiatives is becoming ever clearer across the world in countries that allow sports betting and gambling activities. Responsible Gambling Awareness Week (RGAW) is just one of the tools that governments and regulatory bodies use, but it is an important tool. The week allows countries like South Africa to connect to a wider network of responsible gambling programs and initiatives and to learn from other markets that have more mature and developed regulatory environments. 

In particular, in South Africa, RGAW provides opportunities to reflect on the current measures being taken, where they are ineffective, how the regulatory environment could be improved and what could be learned from other markets. It is also an excellent opportunity to widen the scope of responsible gambling programs and to educate the larger public on how to bet and gamble responsibly.

What Does the Gambling Market in South Africa Currently Look Like?

South Africa currently has a number of different options for residents who enjoy gambling. There are betting shops, physical casinos, a couple of lotteries and some licensed online platforms where residents can benefit from promotions like free spins, as well. These forms of gambling are all legal, but strictly regulated. You might think that this sounds like a perfectly healthy gambling market, but there is a growing number of unlicensed and offshore gambling platforms that are exploiting loopholes in outdated regulations.

Some important features of South Africa's current gambling environment are:

• The current gambling environment in South Africa is overseen by the National Gambling Board (NGB), which was established by the National Gambling Act in 2004. This means that most of the regulations are now over two decades old and have no bearing on the realities of modern digital platforms. 
• Licensing in the country is done on a province-by-province basis. This leads to irregularities and inconsistencies across the different regions. 
• While online sports betting is legal, gambling is not. However, there are no solutions to prevent access to unlicensed offshore platforms. This means that huge sums of revenue that could otherwise be put into public works is lost every year. 
• The NGB, despite having its hands tied with decades-old regulatory tape, is well aware of the issues that gambling can cause. It has claimed that as many as 5% of South Africans may be experiencing problem gambling.

Why Does South Africa's Gambling Market Need Reform? 

If you were reading the above break-down of the current situation carefully, it's likely that you already understand why South Africa's gambling market needs reform. In a nutshell, the regulations currently in place are simply outdated and have no bearing on the reality of the situation. 

You might be thinking that it's all well and good for us to say that the system needs reform, but what sort of reform, how could the system be fixed? 

• Bring the National Gambling Act Up To Date

The first thing that South Africa should do to modernize its gambling environment is to bring the National Gambling Act into line with modern gambling realities. This means that provisions need to be added for online and mobile platforms, centralized data about consumer behavior and betting patterns, and clear guidelines for digital advertising and promotions.

• Legalization and Regulation of Online Platforms

History has seen the truth time and time again: Prohibition does not work. What would serve South Africa better is to legalize and regulate the online gambling market. By legalizing this market and providing options for domestic platforms to gain licences, South Africa would increase the protections that consumers have in the market, gain a greater degree of oversight over operators and greatly increase tax revenue from online gambling ventures.

• Create and Fund Public Awareness Campaigns

With the funding gained from taxed online gambling revenue, the South African government would be able to put more money into the creation and funding of responsible gambling advertising and inititatives. 

Considering that the NGB has highlighted gambling problems as a serious point of concern, taking steps to educate and create awareness of the importance of responsible gambling, well beyond paying lip service to international programs like RGAW, would be a great move.

How Do Initiatives Like Responsible Gambling Awareness Week Help?

International inititatives like RGAW can be a great help to countries with less mature gambling markets like South Africa. By providing a platform for the country to engage with a worldwide ecosystem and learn from other markets, it also allows for strong awareness campaigns for responsible gambling to be constructed and implemented.

With a number of different stakeholders across the South African gambling market involved, RGAW does a number of important things, such as:

• Increasing the frequency of public education about the importance of gambling responsibly. This includes things such as setting limits and taking breaks. 
• Boosting the visibility of support services. Organisations like the South African Responsible Gambling Foundation (SARGF) typically have relatively small footprints, but international events like the RGAW help to increase their visibility. 
• Increasing the frequency of public discussion about the importance of responsible gambling, which in turn increases the chance that it becomes a matter of government policy.

The Time Has Come For South Africa to Create A Safer Future for Gambling

International programs like Responsible Gambling Awareness Week are a great source of inspiration for South Africa. It helps to push public discourse and government policy in the direction of better protecting consumers. 

Alone, RGAW can only bring awareness and prompt discussion, but with government interest and important modernization and reform to outdated policies, programs like RGAW can become the catalyst for widespread change.