Bingo in South Africa

Bingo is one of the most popular gambling activities in Europe and America, even if many of its players don’t really place it in the same boat as, say, casino or sports betting. Regardless of their opinion, though, bingo has been officially recognized as a gambling activity and is being monitored, licensed and taxed as such across the world… Which, unfortunately, means that it’s not really available everywhere. While the availability of bingo in countries like the US have given us thousands of hours of entertainment and some of the most hilarious movie scenes ever (I’m looking straight at you, bingo scene from “Bad Grandpa”), in countries where gambling is heavily monitored or even banned, this most innocent of activities remains little more but a pipe dream. But how does South Africa fare? Can you go and recreate the scene from “Bad Grandpa” (please don’t) or will you be stuck looking at YouTube videos of other people playing bingo while gazing at the screen with a pained expression on your face?

Well, the answer, as is often the case with African gambling, is complicated, but thanks to the National Gambling Board we’ve got it. When it comes to physical bingo, it really depends on where you live, because as it turns out there’s only a single province which has licensed bingo – Gauteng. KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the North West are also technically accepting applications, but no licenses have been issued thus far, as far as I know. Gauteng currently has 17 licenses, 11 of which are active, so that’s not exactly a huge choice, but it’s most certainly better than nothing! If you live outside of Gauteng, though, I’m afraid that, unless you’d be willing to travel, your bingo dreams will remain just that – dreams… Or will they?

Enter our old pal the online casino! Now, as you know, online casinos (and, by extension, online bingo sites) can be pretty weird, depending on them and on your territory. Some only service clients from their own region, others are open internationally – even to territories where gambling is typically forbidden. I actually wasn’t sure about what the situation was in relation to South Africa, so I had to do some research, and the answer is, you guessed it, complicated. But the good news is that you can probably play online bingo without much issue no matter where you are in South Africa. Most sites, even the ones not based in South Africa, are pretty open to international players, and the ones that aren’t will tell you so in plain text the moment you try to enter and they detect your IP address. Many international sites, such as Paddy Power and Foxy Bingo, have explicitly gone out of their way to welcome South African players, so you should be fine! Now stop reading and go play some bingo!

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