South Africa is a developing country, but is being hit hard by a First World problem: sports betting addiction.
Johan Fourie noted earlier this year:
In 2025, South Africans spent close to – if not more than – R1 trillion on sports betting. To put it into perspective, the total annual income of South African households in 2023 was R4.3 trillion. It should be noted, though, that sports betting turnover includes ‘recycled’ spending, i.e. when winnings are used for another bet. Still, sports betting is now a considerable share of household disposable income.
Two years ago, I explained why this is a deeply worrying trend. What’s most striking is how little public outcry there has been about South Africans spending such a colossal share of their monthly budget on an activity with so few tangible benefits.
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We wonder why our economy is not growing, why, in 2024, after almost a year without loadshedding [i.e. scheduled blackouts], there was no economic growth compared to the previous year, when the power was off a third of the time. My answer: A massive share of our disposable income is now being siphoned into frivolous sports bets.
The South African independent news website Daily Maverick reports that the estimate that sports betting accounts for 17% of GDP may be an underestimate, because of the number of foreign betting platforms.
South African news website News24.com recently reported how children are also gambling: “Reports of online sports betting among pupils have highlighted concerns about accessibility through smartphones and a potential rise in compulsive gambling.”
Per capita income in South Africa is stagnant, at about $6,000 per person — down from a peak of over $8500 in 2010, the year the country hosted the FIFA World Cup.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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