The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has pushed back against recent claims that South African households spent more than R1.5 trillion on gambling in 2024, arguing that the headline figure confuses total betting activity with actual household losses. In the bank’s telling, the number is real, but the way it has been used is “misleading”.

The problem lies in what the R1.5 trillion measures. That figure refers to gambling turnover, which is the total amount wagered, including money that is won and then staked again. It captures the churn of repeated betting, not the final amount that leaves household budgets. The Reserve Bank says gross gambling revenue (GGR) offers a more accurate picture because it strips out winnings paid back to players.

By that measure, the picture is still striking, though far smaller than the headlines suggests. GGR rose from R26.3 billion in 2015 to R74.5 billion in 2024. That is a sharp increase in real gambling spend, but it is nowhere near the R1.5 trillion that was cited in reports. That reflects broader gambling turnover, which also climbed steeply over the same period, rising from R358 billion in 2015 to R1.5 trillion in 2024.

The roughly R75 billion that is lost by households represents almost a quarter of all social grant spending in the country and has the consequence of significantly impoverishing households while exacerbating food insecurity, child malnutrition, emotional stress and anguish, and domestic violence.

The Reserve Bank says the growth accelerated after Covid-19, as more South Africans moved into online betting. Even so, gambling remains a relatively small part of total household expenditure when compared with the essentials that dominate most family budgets.

In the national household expenditure and inflation data, gambling falls under “games of chance”. On that measure, games of chance accounted for 1.3% of household spending in 2024, up from 1.1% in 2015. GGR as a share of household spending rose from 0.9% to 1.6% over the same period. However, the SARB says, household spending on essential goods and services also increased.

The Reserve Bank’s core message is not that gambling spending is unimportant. It is that South Africans are indeed spending more on gambling, especially online, but the widely circulated enormous figure exaggerates the scale of that spending by treating recycled bets as if they were fresh household outlays.