Data-Free Betting Is Harvesting South Africa’s Poorest

Betting and gambling have become hot-button topics across South Africa and a growing policy test for the unity government. Millions of South Africans, many under severe financial strain, are being drawn into betting by aggressive marketing, and the removal of barriers to entry.

It has now emerged that betting firms are offering free data access to “help” poor consumers, selling it as digital inclusion rather than what it is: a tactic to recruit customers who could not otherwise afford to place a bet. Removing even the smallest barrier dramatically increases sign-ups, particularly where data costs keep many offline.

An example is Betway’s “Data Free” betting promotion which urges customers to “stay in the game” and promises that they can bet “without using a single meg of data,” directing them to “download the Data Free App”.

Gambling already absorbs a significant share of spending among low-income households. Statistics South Africa’s household expenditure data put it at roughly 1.6% of total household spending and more than half of all leisure spending. National Gambling Board figures indicate annual betting turnover of about R1.5 trillion and roughly R75 billion in gross gambling revenue, close to 1% of GDP, with millions of debt-strained or grant-dependent South Africans now betting weekly.

Speaking to The Common Sense, Frans Cronje said: “What we are dealing with here is not entertainment but a highly sophisticated extraction engine that targets the very people who can least afford to be targeted. In a country where unemployment sits above 30% and youth joblessness above 60%, the betting industry has discovered a rich vein, not among the middle class, but among the desperate and the indebted. It wraps that reality in bright colours, free-bet gimmicks, and now even data-free access, knowing full well that a family living on a grant will be more responsive to the illusion of a quick win than to any warning label. When an industry draws tens of billions of rand out of communities that cannot pay for food, school fees, or transport, and does so through products engineered to be available at every minute of every day, we are no longer talking about business, we are talking about evil predation.”

The World Health Organizsation has set out the social costs of gambling as ranging from mental illness to suicide, poverty, hunger, relationship breakdown, family violence, child neglect, crime, and corruption.

Government has begun to respond. As reported in The Common Sense last week, the National Treasury has moved ahead with a new national gambling tax aimed at reversing some of the immense social damage caused by the sector, but experts say that further action, and more punitive taxes, may be necessary to fully mitigate the damage the betting industry is wreaking in South Africa.