Author: Wayne Lurie

South Africa’s online betting industry has been thrown into needless panic by headlines proclaiming that online gambling is banned. Those headlines are wrong and dangerously so. The recent Supreme Court of Appeal judgment in Portapa (Pty) Ltd t/a Supabets v Casino Association of South Africa was not a nationwide prohibition on online gambling. It was a narrow, fact-specific ruling interpreting one clause in the Gauteng Gambling Act 4 of 1995. The Court confirmed only that a bookmaker licensed under that provincial statute cannot offer fixed-odds bets on roulette, which the same legislation defines as a casino game. Nothing more, nothing…