Data deep dive: African sports betting and casino revenue compared
Africa is an exciting landscape, evolving quickly when it comes to gambling industry opportunities. As more mature markets are seeing a slowdown in growth and regulatory headwinds, operators and investors are looking increasingly towards emerging markets.
As H2 Gambling Capital’s managing director Ed Birkin puts it: “H2 forecasts continued strong market growth going forwards, and if the market is also able to evolve in a regulatory context, we see Africa as an exciting and dynamic market opportunity.
“While the focus for most has been primarily on Latin America, those operators who have focused on Africa have benefited from strong structural market growth over the past few years.”
Undoubtedly, though, Africa is a market that comes with significant challenges. Not least the taxation systems and lack of robust regulatory oversight.
Data provided by H2 has revealed the following…
Onshore vs offshore GGR in Africa: 2019-2030
The chart above shows the growth in GGR since 2019, projected all the way through to 2030. The total CAGR (compound annual growth rate) is set to be 14.21% across these 11 years. That’s 16.29% for onshore, compared to 10.12% for offshore. It’s worth noting the dip between 2019 and 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic affected industries across the globe. A $2.2bn leap in onshore GGR between 2024 and 2025 represents the biggest year-on-year increase, projected or otherwise, in this period.
Sports betting vs casino gaming GGR in Africa: 2019-2030
*For South Africa, casino revenue is counted under betting.
The above chart combines both offshore and onshore GGR. For sports betting, the CAGR is projected to be 13.23% across this 11-year period, while the gaming CAGR will be 18.43%, coming from the relatively low start point of just $0.7bn in 2019. By 2029, gaming is projected to overtake the GGR figure that betting achieved in 2019. Once it reaches that same level, it’s possible to envisage online gaming in the 2030s mirroring the growth of online sports betting in the 2020s in Africa.
By watching the above chart, which visualises the GGR across 18 key African markets between 2019 and 2030, you can see how Nigeria started out in a strong position in 2019 before the combined ‘other’ African nations (in 2022) and South Africa (in 2023) overhauled them. Kenya and Uganda are due to become the next most significant markets by the start of the next decade while smaller markets such as Mauritius, Algeria and Republic of Congo look set to grow steadily.
When it comes to gaming, Ghana has established itself as the market leader over the first half of this decade, overtaking Nigeria in 2023, and is projected to remain there until 2030. South Africa, Cameroon and Kenya are set to be the next biggest markets. Nigeria’s gaming GGR dropped significantly from $274bn in 2022 to just $117bn in 2024.
