There has been plenty of hand-wringing over South Africa’s monster online gambling fetish. But there’s also no denying the incredible sums of cash that the industry is making – and stands to make in the next few years.
On Monday, Sun International CEO Ulrik Bengtsson told Currency that despite talk of imposing curbs on the online gambling market, odds are that it will still double in size by 2030, raking in about R100bn a year.
The fruits were evident in Sun’s profits for the year to end-December, released yesterday. Its online gambling business, Sunbet, more than doubled its earnings to R744m, offsetting a slight drop in profit from its traditional casinos. This windfall will now be shared with Sun’s investors, who will receive a R1 a share special dividend, taking the overall dividend to R5.24 for the year ended December.
These kinds of numbers are both an astounding opportunity for traditional operators, who have seen punters vanish from physical casinos, as well as grounds for a terrific regulatory backlash.
Almost every day, some new study emerges of the scourge of online gambling.
Recreational gamblers
Last week, Old Mutual published a report showing that 40% of working South Africans now gamble frequently, many of them hoping to bridge monthly cash shortfalls. And Stats SA estimates that 55% of recreational spending is directed towards gambling.
Bengtsson, though, isn’t overly anxious – in part because the numbers aren’t actually that big by international standards.
“Look at the US gambling market which is probably $45bn at the moment,” he says. “It’s a perfectly normal trajectory and the consequence of digitalisation. Within that we have an ambition like everyone else to be competitive and take our fair share.”
The digitalisation of society extends far beyond Sunbet, he says. “You can’t really stop consumers from interacting the way they want to. But the flip side of that is what happens when this thing becomes a nuisance for the public, and government needs to look at it.”
Bengtsson has some insight into this issue, being the former head of UK online betting giant William Hill. He says the angst in South Africa right now is “perfectly normal” and there is a predictable path of how this will play out.
“At some point, we will see changes in regulation and we welcome that – there’s nothing we would rather like than to have a predictable, robust, stable regulatory environment,” he says.
This may seem counterintuitive, but regulation suits the more established operators, since it provides strict rules through which the legitimate operators and customers can interact, while allowing for more safeguards.
Get the regulation in place
Bengtsson says that, unfortunately, South Africa doesn’t yet have proper regulation around online gambling, “so the first step in this is actually to make sure industry collaborates with the regulators to get regulation in place”.
If online gambling occupies the waking moments of retailers like Pick n Pay, whose CEO Sean Summers last year lamented how salaries are being frittered away on the habit, its trajectory is equally fascinating for investors.
On the same day as Sun released its results, it hosted a capital markets day to explain its business to investors. And immediately after Bengtsson spoke, Grainne Hurst, the CEO of the UK’s Betting and Gaming Council, stepped up to the podium.
Hurst told analysts that more than £10bn is being staked every year in the UK on unlicensed operators, with an estimated 1.5-million adults engaging with unregulated operators, who tend to target younger customers and “promote fewer checks”.
Her message was simple: worldwide, gambling markets tend to follow the same route, with higher political scrutiny leading to advertising restrictions and licensing reform. As for tax changes, said Hurst, these tend to “reshape markets” but “do not necessarily undermine them [since] balance, clarity and collaboration underpin sustainable growth”.
In other words, Sun’s investors needn’t fear either regulations or any new online gambling tax.
Not ditching the hotels
Bengtsson has far bigger plans for the group than simply leaning into the online gambling boom. Central to Sun International’s growth is a digital strategy led by Leslie Peters, the chief technology officer who came from gaming and software group Games Global.
While South Africa’s overall physical casino market is under huge pressure – and still shrinking – Sun grew this division’s market share and gaming revenue by 4% in the last quarter of 2025.
“We put in a programme to improve our operational intensity in September and we came to the realisation that we weren’t doing very well in how we run our land-based casinos,” Bengtsson says. “We’ve done a lot of work – floor layouts, new products and this is a continuous improvement plan. I believe in the land-based business [but] I think we can do better than we’re doing.”
Sun’s resorts and hotels portfolio, in which the iconic Sun City is housed, posted a 4.7% rise in revenue to R2.9bn, and the company says these assets are critical to its “integrated destination strategy”.
As for the bumper dividend, Bengtsson says there’s enough cash to go around, and that the company’s five-year growth plan is fully-funded. “We had some non-reoccurring cash, so we opted to use that for a special dividend.”
News of the payout shook the market from its seeming torpor towards Sun International, whose shares had been flat over one year. After the stonking results, Sun’s share price jumped more than 10% on Monday.
This is what you might expect after what Ninety One portfolio manager Andrew Joannou described as “a good result”.
“The mature businesses will grow marginally by taking market share while their online betting platform is guided to grow by more than 25% per year until 2030,” he says. “A strong balance sheet, high cash flow conversion, attractive valuation metrics and solid growth prospects; it isn’t difficult to see why the market is driving the share price higher.”
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Top image: Rawpixel/Currency collage.
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