SunBet outlines strategy to close gap with South Africa’s market leaders

SunBet CEO Simon Gregory says investment in technology and product will be central to achieving the operator’s ambitious target to double its online market share in South Africa.

Following Sun International’s Capital Markets Day, eyebrows were raised by some earlier this year when CEO Ulrik Bengtsson laid out a strategy to double SunBet’s share of the South African online market from its current 4.5% within five years.

Since then, SunBet has launched in Namibia, while its parent company Sun International announced in September that revenue from its online brand had surged 35.5% year-on-year during H1 2026.

While Gregory acknowledges that doubling market share in the South African online market is “super ambitious”, it is a challenge he has no issue taking on.

“I don’t have any problem with setting out big targets and big ambitions,” he tells iGB. “And if you can get some way towards that you’ll have done nicely. It’s a journey, not a target, right?”

Exactly how SunBet is progressing on its objective is a little unclear, with Gregory explaining that only Sun International and its competitor Betway (part of Super Group) are publicly listed online operators in South Africa.

But Gregory believes SunBet has made “some progress” since Bengtsson first outlined the operator’s growth plans, despite competing against the two established market leaders in Betway and Hollywoodbets.

“We’ve got small [online] market share, somewhere in the region of 3% to 5%, so there’s plenty to go after,” he explains. “We are probably third or fourth in the market right now. The two incumbents have got massive market share, Betway and Hollywoodbets, so there is opportunity to take market share from them.

“And I think there is a long tail of smaller operators [that] I think in the longer term will find it more difficult to compete with the bigger guys in terms of market reach and product offering.”

Technology holds the key for SunBet

At Sun’s Capital Markets Day, Bengtsson said the company planned to be “more aggressive” in its attempts to gain market share, through investment in technology and product.

When asked how SunBet plans to double its market share, Gregory echoed Bengtsson’s comments, stating: “Product is going to be key and having an outstanding product, which is technically efficient and easy to use and fully available and scalable, is going to be paramount to winning in any of these markets.

“Technically, it requires us to be world-class. And those technical innovations always take time. But we’re going to need to invest heavily in our technology and our product to make it better.”

Gregory adds: “Someone said to me, there’s a difference between being good and being popular, right? But we need to be both. So first, we need to get good, and then we need to get popular.”

In terms of where investment will be targeted, Gregory says it will be heavily centred around upgrading SunBet’s tech stack and bringing more of it in house, which he says will allow the company to move faster and have its roadmap into its “own hands”.

“We need to be fully scalable, efficient, have an outstanding UI, UX, have a great range of products, have features and functionality,” he says. “It’s everywhere.”

SunBet’s sports betting opportunity

In its earnings call following the release of Sun International’s H1 results, Bengtsson explained SunBet’s split between casino and sports betting was roughly 90% to 10% in favour of the former.

Although Gregory acknowledges the operator is under-indexed in sports, he says the company is now investing to grow its sportsbook share.

“We’re certainly under-indexed on sport, and that’s probably due to the growth in our casino business, coming from our casino heritage,” he explains. “But we are certainly putting a lot of effort into reimagining our sportsbook to see if we can grow that number.”

Gregory says SunBet’s investment in its sportsbook is already under way, with a series of upgrades aimed at making the offering more appealing to customers.

“We’ve put in a whole lot of software, some StatScore products, we’ve got a programme to make the UI and UX better over the next six weeks,” he continues. “So by early December, we should have a new look and feel to our sports product, and looking at features and functionality around how to make that more compelling and better for customers.”

Cautious approach to expansion

SunBet’s launch in Namibia marked its third market after Botswana and South Africa. The operator also holds licences in Ghana, Zambia and Kenya, although it hasn’t yet operationalised in those nations.

Gregory says SunBet is taking a cautious approach to further expansion, with the brand currently focusing on growth in Namibia.

“We’re cautious about other greenfield African expansions,” he comments. “I think you’ve seen a lot of European guys come in, spend a lot of money in Africa, not get much traction and leave.”

Bengtsson previously said the company viewed “plenty of inorganic opportunities” both inside and outside South Africa, but asserted the business had a “very high bar” for what it deemed as investments that could aid growth.

Gregory says M&A could offer a way into new markets, provided the expansion opportunities meet the criteria in terms of data such as internet penetration, mobile money usage and propensities to wager.

“We’ve been pretty clear in our public statements that we would be interested in high-quality M&A, where it would provide us with critical mass in certain geographies,” he says. “So a top three player in certain African jurisdictions that have got a strong customer base and strong brand and perhaps some strong technology, then that would be interesting for us.”

When asked how SunBet plans to balance its objective of doubling online market share in South Africa with expansion opportunities elsewhere, Gregory stresses the two are not “mutually exclusive”.

Gregory concludes: “We can do well in both. It’s just a matter of resourcing.”