19 April 2024 by Wayne Lurie
In a surprise move this past week on 17 April with a little more than a month to go before South African national elections, the Shadow Minister of Trade & Industry and senior Democratic Alliance Member of Parliament, Mr Dean Macpherson MP officially tabled his Remote Gambling Bill, 2024 in South African Parliament.
In a press release surrounding the Remote Gambling Bill, 2024 (RGB) on its official website, the DA emphasised the ruling government’s inaction on the subject matter for over 16 years and it underscored the difficulties caused by the government’s failure in introducing modern, cohesive, and uniform regulation of the online gambling sector, not to mention the concomitant loss of taxes to government coffers.
Despite this, in the recent annual report released by the National Gambling Board it proudly published statistics showing nearly R2-billion in taxes having been collected largely from the online betting sector and with almost 80% of that having been collected by the Western Cape and Mpumalanga regulators, which regulators, despite the lack of national policy and guidance, have laudably liberalised the online gaming sector and done their level best to sensibly regulate their licensees on the back of archaic legislation.
The path that the RGB must now navigate is a somewhat lengthy and possibly arduous one, with it first having to survive the scrutiny of the parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry and then having to pass through the two houses of Parliament, the National Assembly and National Council of Provinces, with strong majority support. If the RGB in fact passes into law, Regulations will need to follow.
The RGB makes provision for both national and provincial regulations and leaves it to the provinces to determine certain details that very interestingly might cause a variance and even potentially make some provinces more attractive than others. These details to be determined provincially include the process for obtaining a remote gambling operator or manufacturer licence, forms, fees and even levels of disclosure required. Once regulations are finalised and have been promulgated, it is reasonable to expect that the respective regulators will need to adjust their administrations and engage in training and rollout to practically implement the RGB and both the national and provincial regulations.
Taking the whole process into account, it cannot be conceivable in our view that we will see such licences being made available for operators in anything less than two to three years from the RGB’s tabling this week. Having said that, the industry and regulators have ‘made a plan’ in the absence of tailor-made regulation for more than 10 years now, so another few years are very unlikely to derail the industry nor its exponential year-on-year growth.
We view the RGB as an overall very positive development, particularly since the introducing member has recognised the paramount need to keep the day-to-day regulation of licensees in the hands of the provincial regulators, especially those with almost 10 years of solid experience under their belts. A central or national regulation model would, in our view, not only have been impractical but would undoubtedly have doomed the RGB to years of litigation in the apex Constitutional Court on matters of concurrent competency and the like.
We fervently hope that the bill will not suffer the same fate of Mr Macpherson’s predecessor, Geordin Hill-Lewis (now the much-loved Mayor of Cape Town) when he introduced a similar version of the RGB in 2015, and which did not receive the requisite majority support. We would also hope that the ruling party lends its support to the RGB and understands the dire need for reform in regulation of this sector and also sees the significance of the very substantial tax revenue both being generated and lost, by the online gaming sector, as worthy of modern and efficient regulation.
Being that our firm is almost 100% Gaming and Gambling driven and that our day-to-day work supports this industry, that we have remained passionate about for over 21 years as the oldest gambling law focussed firm in South Africa, we will be keeping a keen eye on the passage of the RGB and all developments surrounding it. We wish the RGB a Bon Voyage and warmly congratulate Mr Macpherson on its tabling!
