South Africa’s NGB blocking plan advances as EOI deadline approaches

The National Gambling Board (NGB) wants a service provider to monitor, block, track and report illegal online gambling websites targeting South African consumers.

Published on 30 June, the expression of interest was amended on 17 July. The NGB moved the closing date from 7 August to 4 September 2026 after a briefing session for prospective bidders on 15 July.

The illegal market targeted by the initiative is substantial. Yield Sec research commissioned by the South African Bookmakers’ Association (SABA) attributes roughly 62% of online gambling activity in the country to illegal operators. More than R50 billion ($3.1 billion) in gross gambling revenue flows offshore each year, according to the research.

In June, acting chief executive Lungile Dukwana told parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Trade, Industry and Competition that no national policy position on interactive gambling had been finalised. He said South Africa still needed to develop a legal framework for online gambling. The board is engaging the National Gambling Policy Council on the issue.

Speaking to Business Day TV, Dukwana said blocking raises technical and legal concerns for some but is long overdue in the view of others. He described the procurement as a scoping exercise: “We want to understand what is in the market.”

The proposed blocking system

The proposed service would monitor and profile illegal gambling websites targeting South Africans. This would include their country of origin, licence status and ownership.

The provider would also block identified sites and report them to the NGB for referral to law enforcement. It would then track blocked sites and ensure the NGB blocks them again if they reappear.

The board grounds the exercise in the National Gambling Act. It cites its duty to assist provincial licensing authorities in detecting unlicensed gambling. The NGB says that creating the capacity to block websites “will contribute towards the suppression of illegal gambling activities…”.

Interactive gambling remains illegal in South Africa. The 2008 National Gambling Amendment Act sought to establish a licensing regime for interactive gambling but it never came into operation.

The EOI says the proliferation of illegal interactive gambling has continued “with impunity to the express prohibition”.

The NGB does not envisage a single purge. Instead, it wants a standing capability that can block sites “each time illegal operators try to offer illegal gambling to local punters”. The provider would also hand the resulting information to law enforcement so authorities can penalise operators.

Crucially, the EOI does not commit the board to awarding a contract. Instead, it seeks proposals from providers “willing to be invited to participate in a subsequent Request for Proposal (RFP) or Tender process”.

The board says it will use the submissions “to develop a request for proposals/specifications without any restrictions or obligation to the service provider”.

The responses will help shape the specification for any eventual tender. For now, bidders only need to submit a company profile, a tax clearance certificate if they are not an international provider, and any relevant certifications or licences.

ISPA pushes back on blocking

South African law does not currently require internet service providers to block access to unlicensed gambling websites. Industry representatives have warned against imposing such a requirement without a clear legislative framework.

Days after the EOI appeared, the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) published a position paper opposing administratively ordered blocking. The paper followed a formal NGB request to the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies to implement blocking against offshore platforms.

“ISPA’s position is that any disruption of internet services to South Africans should be done only as part of a clear legislative framework that balances the right to communicate against the potential harm of problematic content,” ISPA chair Sasha Booth-Beharilal told TechCentral.

ISPA accepts that providers may have to block some illegal content. However, it says any such regime requires a clear legal basis, judicial oversight and time-limited obligations.

ISPA also questioned whether blocking actually works. Domain-name blocking is easy for technically proficient users to circumvent, it said, while IP-address blocking carries unintended consequences.

It cited a European court-ordered block of a handful of shared IP addresses that took down more than half a million unrelated sites.

Deep packet inspection, it said, is “typically used only by autocratic governments in countries where citizens do not have the same rights enjoyed by South Africans”.

Limited capacity, ambitious scope

Existing capacity remains limited. In a written reply to the National Assembly, the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition said the board had allocated two human capital resources and R596,000 to identifying illegal gambling websites in the 2025/26 financial year.

The same reply said the NGB database contained 90 illegal gambling websites. Companies licensed overseas operated all of them.

The Ministry also confirmed that the board does not engage the operators directly. Of the 10 websites the NGB referred to Google Africa for removal from search results in 2024/25, none had been removed at the time of the reply.

The board’s annual report records that 23 of the 90 operators blocked access to their own sites following NGB intervention. However, it notes that punters can still reach them using evasive technologies.

Dukwana told Business Day TV that sites removed with the help of Google and Meta do not stay down. He said the tracking function in the EOI aims to address that problem. “They would appear the following day and be with something else,” he said.

Website blocking ‘not a silver bullet’

SABA’s chief executive, Sean Coleman, has welcomed the procurement while cautioning against treating it as a solution on its own. “Website blocking, while important, should not be viewed as a silver bullet,” he told iGaming Business, noting that illegal operators can rapidly establish mirror and replacement sites.

The EOI also asks bidders what they would need to operate the service. They must detail their methodology, name the stakeholders they would partner with, state what approvals and letters of consent they would need and at what stage, and explain “how the service provider intends to address the challenges that the NGB is currently exposed to”.

The same paragraph asks bidders to identify potential revenue streams and explain how these could help sustain the service. The arrangement asks a good deal from prospective bidders while offering no guarantee of a subsequent contract.

NGB declines to comment

The NGB declined to provide detailed responses to questions about the EOI, saying the procurement process remains active and submissions are still pending.

“The matters raised relate directly to an Expression of Interest process that is currently under way,” the NGB said.

The regulator said it had held a formal information session with prospective bidders. It provided information and clarification about the EOI and said it wanted to ensure all potential bidders had access to the same information through the established procurement process.

The NGB added that providing further information while the process remains under way could create a risk of “unequal access to information” or be perceived as providing clarification outside the established process.

It said further information on the process and the way forward would be communicated once the EOI submission process has concluded.