Online betting in Africa, country by country
For press and research
Six countries, one questionnaire, and almost no shared conclusion. GeoPoll surveyed 2,866 bettors in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda between 24 June and 16 July 2026: football leads in four countries, crash games lead the exceptions in Kenya, casino leads in South Africa — and Morocco, our readers' market, is not in the survey at all. This page publishes the country-by-country comparison, with its limits stated up front.
- Football as the favourite product runs from 29% (South Africa) to 84% (Uganda) depending on the country: a range, not a continental fact.
- Kenya is the crash exception: 24% of its bettors name Aviator as their favourite product.
- Uganda spends the most (17% above $50 a month); Tanzania the least (67% under $10).
- One constant only: 95% of bettors in the six countries play on mobile.
The full dataset is attached to this page, free to download.
The key figures
67% — football's share as the main product across the six countries; crash games (Aviator-style) follow at 13%, casino at 11%, lotteries at 5%. [1]
Source: GeoPoll, "Betting in Africa 2026" (2,866 respondents, 24 June – 16 July 2026).
24% — Kenyan bettors who name Aviator as their favourite product: nearly double the six-country crash average (13%). [1]
Source: GeoPoll, "Betting in Africa 2026".
36% vs 29% — in South Africa, casino beats football; it is the only one of the six countries where football is not first. [1]
Source: GeoPoll, "Betting in Africa 2026".
58% — bettors across the six countries who spend under $10 a month; 24% spend between $10 and $25. [1]
Source: GeoPoll, "Betting in Africa 2026".
95% — bettors who place bets via smartphone in the six surveyed countries (country range: 94–96%). Morocco is not part of this survey. [1]
Source: GeoPoll, "Betting in Africa 2026".
| Country | Sample | Football | Crash (Aviator) | Casino | < $10/month | ≥ $50/month | Men | Mobile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ghana | 547 | n.p. | n.p. | n.p. | n.p. | 10% | 82% | 96% |
| Kenya | 557 | n.p. | 24% | n.p. | n.p. | 7% | 61% | 96% |
| Nigeria | 526 | 81% | n.p. | n.p. | n.p. | 9% | 73% | 96% |
| South Africa | 496 | 29% | n.p. | 36% | n.p. | 11% | 46% | 96% |
| Tanzania | 428 | 78% | n.p. | n.p. | 67% | 9% | 78% | n.p. |
| Uganda | 312 | 84% | n.p. | n.p. | 35% | 17% | 76% | 94% |
| Six countries | 2,866 | 67% | 13% | 11% | 58% | ≈ 10% | 69% | 95% |
How to read this: "n.p." = value not published in the report for this country. We fill no empty cell: the report publishes per-country product shares only for the cases it discusses, and this page does the same. The full table — with the age, frequency and participation columns — is downloadable as a CSV below.
Favourite products: football everywhere, except where it is not
Across the six countries combined, football is the main product for 67% of bettors, far ahead of crash games (13%), casino (11%) and lotteries (5%). [1] But that continental average is the least informative figure on this page: taken apart country by country, it falls to pieces. Football captures 84% of bettors in Uganda, 81% in Nigeria and 78% in Tanzania — then drops to 29% in South Africa, where it is not even first. "Africa bets on football" summarises a 55-point range by its middle.
Two countries break the pattern, and they get the next two sections: Kenya, where crash games reach a level unmatched in the sample, and South Africa, where casino leads and women are the majority of bettors. The other four countries resemble each other on product — and stop resembling each other as soon as spending enters the picture.
Kenya, the crash-games exception
In Kenya, 24% of bettors name Aviator as their favourite product. [1] That is by far the highest crash-games share in the six countries: the sample average is 13%, and the report notes Kenya is "roughly double the next-highest market". Kenya also records the highest declared participation (64% of respondents report a football bet in the past twelve months, on the report's measure) and the heaviest 18–24 presence (36%). In other words, the youngest and most engaged market in the sample is also the one that has tipped furthest towards fast formats — an instant-game culture that football alone does not explain.
Distribution is part of the story: the report links this appetite to the growth of crash games in Africa, whose leading title's publisher claims roughly +54% players a year on the continent. For readers of our pages — which cover crash games — Kenya is therefore the reference market: the one where the format is not a niche, but the country's second product story.
South Africa, the casino exception — and its majority of women bettors
South Africa inverts almost everything. Casino is the favourite product (36%), ahead of football (29%) and lotteries (16%) — a lottery share unmatched in the other countries. [1] The report reads this as the effect of the sample's most developed and most tightly regulated gambling market: casino and lottery supply is wider there, and preferences follow supply.
The demographic contrast is sharper still: women make up 54% of South African bettors — the only one of the six countries where they are the majority, while men account for 69% of the total sample and as much as 82% in Ghana. South Africa is also the sample's oldest market (38% aged 35–44). A market whose leading product is not football, whose bettors are majority women and older cannot be run like Kenya or Uganda: that is the report's own conclusion, and the figures carry it.
Spend: Uganda at the top, Tanzania at the bottom
Monthly spend is modest for most bettors: 58% spend under $10 a month, 24% between $10 and $25, and only about 10% exceed $50. [1] But the average hides the spread again. In Uganda, only 35% of bettors are under $10, 40% sit in the $10–25 band, 17% exceed $50 — and 6% report more than $500 a month, the sample's heaviest high-spender tail. At the other end, Tanzania concentrates 67% of its bettors under $10. South Africa sits just behind Uganda at the top of the scale (11% above $50).
Crossed with the product section, this yields the page's least intuitive conclusion: Uganda is both the most football-loyal country (84%) and the biggest spender; Tanzania, nearly as football-led (78%), is the most economical. Product preference and spend level are two independent axes — any reading that merges them gets both wrong.
Frequency and age: a young bettor, weekly or daily
Betting is not occasional in these six countries: 55% of bettors play at least weekly, and 28% play daily or more. [1] The report presents frequency as a regional constant — it varies little between countries, unlike products and spend. Age draws the same young profile: 45% of bettors are 25–34 and 26% are 18–24, so 71% are under 35. Nuances exist — Uganda concentrates 59% in the 25–34 band, Kenya has the strongest 18–24 share (36%), South Africa the oldest profile — but they remain nuances inside one portrait: a young, connected bettor who plays often.
Mobile, the continent's only constant
95% of bettors in the six countries place bets via smartphone, with a maximum spread of two points between countries (94% in Uganda, 96% in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa). [1] It is the survey's only non-diverging value: products change, spend changes, audience composition changes — the channel never does. The report draws the practical consequence: competition between operators is fought on mobile experience (speed, data cost, reliability), not on the channel itself.
The comparator: the six countries, indicator by indicator
Pick a country: the panel shows its report-published values — product, spend, audience, channel. Indicators the report does not publish for that country are shown as such.
Six-country reference values: football 67% · crash 13% · casino 11% · lotteries 5% · at least weekly 55% · daily or more 28% · aged 25–34 45% · aged 18–24 26% · men 69% · mobile 95%. Source: GeoPoll, "Betting in Africa 2026".
What market size does not explain (H2 / GCI / Statista cross-check)
How large are these markets? On H2 Gambling Capital figures, online gross gaming revenue puts South Africa far ahead ($3.3 billion), ahead of Nigeria ($1.1 billion), Ghana ($883 million) and Kenya ($678 million). [3] Preference does not follow that ranking: the smallest of the four sized markets, Kenya, is the crash-games champion; the largest, South Africa, is the only one where football is not first. A market's size says how much is played there — not what is played.
The continental frame completes the picture. Gaming Compliance International puts African online gross gaming revenue at $23 billion, 77% of it outside licensed sites, with the regulated share of revenue at 0.3% in North Africa, 31% in West Africa and 28% in Southern Africa. [4] [5] Statista values African sports betting at about $3.08 billion at the end of 2025 [6] — the same order of magnitude as the ≈ $3 billion cited by GeoPoll: two independent estimates converge. A reading caution: these series measure market revenue, while GeoPoll measures declared preferences — the cross-check compares orders of magnitude; it derives no per-country figure.
Morocco, the missing seventh market
Then there is the country that is not there. Morocco — our readers' market, and one of the continent's most active — is not among the six countries GeoPoll surveyed, and no equivalent survey, with the same questionnaire and public results, exists for it: that is the finding our page on crash games in Morocco and Africa had already established. No figure on this page should therefore be read as a Moroccan figure: not the 95% mobile rate, not the product shares, not the spend bands.
That gap is itself information. It means the international comparisons used to analyse the Moroccan market rest on revenue estimates, never on measured behaviour. The day a survey of this type covers Morocco, this page will be updated with its results — until then, we prefer a seventh country absent to a seventh country invented.
Full dataset: this page's country-by-country table (samples, products, spend, audiences, channel, market sizes) as a CSV — the exact values every figure on this page is drawn from, with unpublished cells left empty. Download the CSV
Free reuse for press and research, with the citation: "Source: GeoPoll, 'Betting in Africa 2026' — figures compiled by Chicken Road Productions" — https://chickenroadproductions.com/en/africa-online-betting-by-country/
Quoting these figures? The newsroom replies via the Press page.
Frequently asked questions
Which African country bets most on crash games?
Kenya, among the six countries GeoPoll surveyed in 2026: 24% of its bettors name Aviator as their favourite product, against a six-country crash-games average of 13%. No other country in the sample comes close.
Is Morocco in the GeoPoll survey?
No. "Betting in Africa 2026" covers Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda (2,866 respondents, 24 June – 16 July 2026). None of its figures describes Morocco, and no equivalent survey exists for the Moroccan market to date.
In which country are women the majority of bettors?
South Africa, where women account for 54% of bettors — a majority none of the other five countries shows. Across the six countries, men are 69% of bettors.
How much do bettors in these countries spend per month?
Most spend little: 58% spend under $10 a month and 24% between $10 and $25. Country gaps are wide: 17% of Ugandans exceed $50 a month, against 7% of Kenyans, and 67% of Tanzanians stay under $10.
Can I quote or reuse these figures?
Yes, freely, with the citation "Source: GeoPoll, 'Betting in Africa 2026' — figures compiled by Chicken Road Productions" and a link to this page. The full CSV is downloadable in the section above; for a specific extraction, the newsroom replies via the Press page.
Methodology and limits
References
- [1] GeoPoll, "Betting in Africa 2026" — full report (survey conducted 24 June – 16 July 2026, 2,866 respondents), full text: https://theadvisermagazine.com/market-research/market-analysis/research-report-betting-in-africa-2026/
- [2] FocusGN, "Africa's betting markets show sharp differences across countries, GeoPoll finds", 23 July 2026, https://focusgn.com/africa/africas-betting-markets-show-sharp-differences-across-countries-geopoll-finds
- [3] H2 Gambling Capital, online gross gaming revenue by country, 2025 data — figures carried and verified in Chicken Road Productions, "Crash games in Morocco and Africa: the 2026 figures".
- [4] Gaming Compliance International, "Winning Ground: The First Online Gambling Report Spanning Every African Nation", PR Newswire, 20 July 2026, https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/winning-ground-the-first-online-gambling-report-spanning-every-african-nation-839933113.html
- [5] Gaming Compliance International, "Winning Ground" report, July 2026 — SiGMA News report, https://sigma.world/news/africa-online-gambling-market-gci-report-ismail-vali/
- [6] Statista, Market Outlook, December 2025, via Global Gambling News, 22 December 2025, https://globalgamblingnews.com/africas-sports-betting-market-poised-for-3bn-growth/
Our other statistics
The world crash-games market: crash games statistics 2026 — 1 million simulated rounds.
The player portrait: who plays crash games — profile and behaviour in figures.
The ground: crash games in Morocco and Africa — market, mobile and offshore in figures.