South Africa’s lottery operator falls short of sales forecast as Tau weighs appeal

South Africa’s trade minister, Parks Tau, has told MPs he has yet to decide whether to appeal against a court ruling that overturned his decision to award the national lottery licence to Sizekhaya Holdings. At the same hearing, the regulator said Sizekhaya’s ticket sales were well below its bid forecast.

Tau appeared before Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Trade, Industry and Competition on 10 November, eight days after the ruling.

According to EWN, Tau told the committee: “The matter is currently under consideration in the department. We have to define what the way forward is, taking into account the rulings of the court.”

Sales below forecast

The National Lotteries Commission (NLC), which regulates the lottery, said Sizekhaya was underperforming.

“They had anticipated to generate around R3.5 billion in ticket sales,” NLC executive manager Tintswalo Nkuna said. She put actual sales at R2.1bn, which she said was 39% short of the bid.

Sales were also 21.7% below the revised 2026–27 forecast. However, Nkuna said the NLC had expected a dip because players are often wary of a new operator.

Sizekhaya took over the lottery on 1 June 2026 from Ithuba Holdings, which had run it for 11 years.

Award sent back to minister

The case was brought by two losing bidders, Ithuba Lottery and Ringeta Consortium. The tender’s evaluation committee had ranked Ringeta first with 73.92 points, narrowly ahead of Sizekhaya on 72.95, and an NLC board committee recommended Ringeta.

Tau later set up a ministerial committee to reassess the bids, and it recommended Sizekhaya.

Judge Norman Davis found the committee had run a “parallel process” that re-scored the bids outside the tender rules. He said Tau’s reasons “often followed the Ministerial Committee’s recommendations word for word”.

Davis accepted Tau’s good faith. However, he ruled that creating and using the committee was “unlawful and procedurally unfair”.

The court rejected Ithuba’s argument that Sizekhaya lacked fully committed funding when it won the licence. The ruling also does not stop Sizekhaya winning the licence again.

The licence agreement was declared invalid, and Tau must reconsider the award without the committee’s report.

However, Sizekhaya can keep running the lottery for up to a year. Tau has six months to make a fresh decision, and a further six months to sign a new agreement and, if needed, arrange a handover to another operator.

NLC chair Tembinkosi Bonakele defended Tau’s decision to seek further advice.

“It is fair to say, without criticising the judiciary, that there are some contradictions as to how the process should be managed, at least by the minister,” he said.

He said Tau had wanted to examine matters a written bid cannot easily show. “Things like probity, things like BEE [Black Economic Empowerment], things like whether the games were properly defined as lottery games,” he said.

As iGB has previously reported, the award has been politically controversial. Opposition parties have questioned a minority stake held by Bellamont Gaming, which is co-owned by the sister of Deputy President Paul Mashatile’s wife. Sizekhaya has rejected allegations of political influence.

Bonakele said the NLC board was waiting for Tau to decide whether to appeal.