It’s been a few months since our last best sports betting blog post, so for this one I thought I’d take a quick look at some of the craziness of 2020, and what 2021 might have instore.
In 2020 online sports betting in South Africa saw the introduction of several new products, including data free betting, virtual sports, online slots, blackjack roulette and a host of new live casino style games. We also saw a spike in the popularity of alternative betting options like eSports, which was mostly unaffected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Many of the new products were no doubt as result of covid, as bookmakers struggled to offer punters interesting and engaging content due to the initial lack of major international and local sports. Fortunately we have to give credit where it’s due, SA bookmakers rose to challenge of the new online landscape. If you look back at the history of sports betting in South Africa I doubt you’ll find a year as groundbreaking as 2020 was.
Leading up to 2020
Before 2020 the winds of change were blowing (more like a breeze) in the South African online space, the introduction of Betgames was one of the products that paved the way for what we can now bet on today. Betgames opened the door to playing casino and lucky number style games online, which attracted a whole different audience.
However before Betgames the only thing you could really play other than sports online was horse racing and lucky numbers. Let’s face it, the only major change offering wise (banking etc is another story) was the introduction of lucky numbers. I can’t quite recall when exactly lucky numbers was launched but I’m confident it was in the 2010-2015 period.
Covid and competitiveness put a fire under bookmakers bums, forcing them to offer a new range of products, and while we’re sure some of these products would eventually be available locally we suspect it would’ve taken much longer to implement, years perhaps. If you’d mentioned being able to bet on your favourite sports without using data or even using cash out in SA in 2015 you’d be looked at funny!
What will 2021 offer?
2021 is a few weeks old but we’ve already seen the introduction of 19 new slots games at Supabets, a host of new casino games at big bookies like Hollywoodbets, Betway and WSB. Online casino will likely be a big focus for many bookmakers as more games become legalized in South Africa.
We’re also likely to see a host of new and different virtual sports offered and hopefully we will see online slots being fully legalized, so that there will be more choice than what is currently available at Supabets and Lottostar.
Data Free Betting will continue to be popular and we expect to see more bookmakers offer a data free betting service, most major books do offer a free site but we’d love to see some of the biggest ones like Hollywoodbets and Sportingbet offer a data free option. To add to that we’d love to see a data free site where you can bet on live casino games, something that is a big challenge considering how much data live games use.
We’re also hopeful for a few more software providers and bookmakers, even though the market is very competitive there is still lots of opportunity for bookmakers if they read the market and it’s needs correctly.
In conclusion
2021 looks set to be a bumper year if bookies can keep some of the momentum built up in 2020 going, and listen to what South African punters needs and wants are. We’d also love to see some awesome new products that aren’t mentioned in this article, but we don’t want to speculate too much! The good news is online betting in South Africa has overcome an unpredictable 2020, coming out even stronger and 2021 promises to be even better!
What do you think the future of sports betting in South Africa holds? What products would you love to see locally? Let us know in the comments below!