Having been an early entrant to the South African market, what kind of changes have you seen in iGaming innovation and consumer demand?

Since launching, we’ve watched the market accelerate fast. The National Gambling Board’s own figures show gross gambling revenue climbing to R75bn ($4.59bn) for 2024/25, up from R59.3bn the year before, with online betting now the dominant driver of that growth. Mobile-led play has become the clear default. Player expectations have shifted alongside that momentum. Audiences are moving beyond purely land-based-style content toward more sophisticated mechanics, with strong interest in features like lock-and-spin and three-pot formats, while still showing real loyalty to proven classics. It is a market maturing in real time – and suppliers have to move quickly to keep pace. 

Do you believe South Africa represents an achievable regulatory benchmark for other African markets?

South Africa’s regulatory picture is genuinely complex rather than exemplary. There’s still no dedicated online casino legislation, so games like slots and roulette are structured as betting events under existing law and licensing runs through nine separate provincial bodies, rather than one unified national framework. That patchwork has been navigatable for us because we invested early in compliance expertise and strong local partnerships. It would perhaps be prudent to avoid calling it a benchmark, given that South Africa hasn’t solved online gambling regulation so much as built a workable path through an outdated one. Other markets could learn more from that adaptability than from trying to copy the structure itself.

When you arrived in the market, what were the first strategies you realised were transferable from your experiences elsewhere? 

Entering through Novomatic Africa gave us an immediate foundation. We were able to leverage existing operator relationships and real data on land-based player behaviour we could build from rather than starting cold. That meant our content strategy transferred directly, leading with proven, land-based-familiar titles that gave us instant recognition with players. Our compliance-first approach to market entry, refined across many jurisdictions, also proved essential given how fragmented and provincially led South Africa’s licensing structure is compared with more centralised European markets. 

On the other hand, were there any ways in which you had to localise your products that were perhaps unexpected?

The bigger adjustment wasn’t visual localisation, it was mechanical. While land-based players gravitate toward the classics, the online audience showed a broader appetite for innovation than we had assumed. Modern features like lock-and-spin, three-pot mechanics and jackpot series have performed strongly, and crash games have emerged as a bigger opportunity than expected. It underlined that South African online players are a distinct, more experimental audience in their own right, rather than simply mirroring land-based tastes.  

In what ways do you think South Africa is leading the way for sustainable regulated gambling industries across the continent?

South Africa’s scale and player volume make it a genuine proving ground. It’s the first regulated market where we fully rolled out our Mynt platform; stress-testing tools like free spins and our Bet Peak promo engine under real, high-volume conditions, which has directly shaped how confidently we can take those tools elsewhere. At the same time, regulators are showing real enforcement appetite by tightening advertising standards, increasing mandatory RG funding contributions, and cracking down on illegal and offshore operators. Legislation for online casino content is still catching up, but the seriousness with which player protection is being treated, alongside genuine innovation, offers a useful model for sustainable growth across the continent.