Sun International has introduced a voluntary responsible gambling charter that keeps its advertising off air during school-run and after-school hours. It also bars social grant and student-aid recipients from opening online accounts. South Africa’s largest casino group is positioning itself ahead of tighter national rules on online betting.

The charter, launched at an event in Sandton on 13 October, covers Sun International’s land-based casinos and its online brand SunBet, which operates in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. The full document is published on the group’s website.

Advertising watersheds

The headline commitment is a watershed. Sun International will not run time-dependent broadcast or display gambling adverts between 06:00 and 08:00 or between 12:00 and 18:00, the windows when children are most likely to be watching. South African regulation sets no such watershed, and the company says the measure “goes beyond regulatory requirements”.

The group will also avoid any platform, channel or programme where most of the audience is under the legal gambling age, at any time of day. It will devote 10% of its gambling advertising content to responsible gambling messaging. Separate age-targeting and audience standards will apply to social media, search, push notifications and email.

Grant recipients excluded

The most unusual measure targets the source of players’ funds. SunBet’s registration form will list recipients of SASSA social grants and NSFAS student funding as options under “source of income”, and accounts will not be activated if either is selected. The check relies on self-declaration: Bengtsson told BusinessDay that the company has no access to SASSA or NSFAS records.

Other commitments include identity, age and address checks at registration and withdrawal, one verified account per person, and deposit limits, reality checks, cooling-off and self-exclusion tools accessible from the SunBet homepage. The group plans to add data analytics and AI-supported behavioural monitoring to flag at-risk players, which the trade press reported will start in 2027. It will also seek certification from an international responsible gambling body and introduce an annual external audit.

On governance, a responsible gambling steering committee will report quarterly to the executive committee, with oversight from the board’s social and ethics committee. Four measures tied to player protection, training, marketing and compliance will feed into the executive performance scorecard.

Regulatory backdrop

The timing is not accidental. National Treasury has proposed a 20% national tax on online gambling revenue, and Bengtsson said the government is preparing new gambling legislation. A wider ban on gambling advertising has also been floated in public debate. The National Gambling Board is procuring technology to block unlicensed operators, and BusinessDay cited estimates that illegal online gambling takes in around R50bn a year.

Bengtsson used the launch to warn against measures that tilt the field towards offshore sites. “Rules or taxes that make licensed operators less competitive than offshore sites will push players towards platforms where they have no protection,” he said, as reported by iGaming Business.

Regulators were supportive but cautious. Gauteng economic development MEC Vuyiswa Ramokgopa welcomed the voluntary advertising hours but said: “The charter must complement the work of the regulator. It does not replace it.” She added that the province is reviewing its gambling legislation.

SunBet is now a material part of the group. Its income rose 75.9% to R2.1bn in the year to December 2025, according to BusinessDay. A self-imposed code gives Sun International a template to put in front of policymakers. Whether rivals follow, or whether lawmakers write similar watersheds into national rules, will shape how much it costs the group competitively.

Alberta’s transition window for grey-market online gambling operators has closed, with around 50 regulated sites now live in Canada’s second provincial open iGaming market. Any site still taking wagers from Albertans without approval is now operating illegally, and provincial authorities say they are preparing to act.

The province’s regulated market launched on 13 July 2026. Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) granted operators a grace period of up to three months on a case-by-case basis, provided they could show a path to compliance. That period ended on 13 October.

Counting the market

Reported totals vary slightly depending on timing. A spokesperson for the Alberta iGaming Corporation (AiGC) told Casino.org that 51 approved sites were live from 30 operators, while cautioning that the number could change during the day. Other outlets put the tally at between 48 and 50 sites. Canadian Gaming Business reported that more than 60 sites are expected by 2027.

The final figure fell short of earlier projections. Before the deadline, the provincial government had suggested the count of licensed sites could rise from about 35 to around 60 by October.

Before the new regime, PlayAlberta, run by AGLC, was the only legal online casino in the province, although offshore brands operated openly in the grey market. The iGaming Alberta Act, passed in 2025, created a competitive framework broadly modelled on Ontario, where private operators contract with a provincial body rather than holding conventional licences. Ontario opened its market in April 2022 and now has dozens of operators live, giving Alberta a benchmark for how quickly a regulated market can absorb former grey-market brands.

To operate legally, companies must register with AGLC and also sign a commercial agreement with AiGC, the Crown corporation that oversees the market. Registration carries a C$50,000 application fee and a C$150,000 annual fee for each site, according to Covers.

Who is in and who is out

Super Group runs several brands in the province, and Apollo Entertainment operates seven casino brands. Stake secured its licence ahead of the deadline. PointsBet, by contrast, is registered with AGLC but has not finished its commercial agreement with AiGC, so its site is not yet live; the company said this week that its Alberta launch is planned for the second half of its financial year.

In poker, PokerStars is leaving the province, at least for now, according to Gaming News Canada. 888poker has launched what it describes as Alberta’s first regulated online poker room, while GGPoker has no current plans to offer poker in the province.

“Alberta’s regulated iGaming market exists to protect Albertans,” said Dan Keene, chief executive of AiGC, adding that he looked forward to working with operators moving away from the “illegal grey market”.

Enforcement to come

The provincial government says it will pursue operators that remain in the unregulated space, although it has not set out specific measures. Cease-and-desist letters and pressure on payment processors have both been floated.

“AGLC has several investigative options available,” said Lynden McBeth, a spokesperson for the regulator, adding that it could not discuss operational techniques publicly in order to protect investigations.

Ontario, which opened its market in 2022, offers one model. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has fined registered suppliers whose content was found on unauthorised sites, including two C$40,000 penalties in May. Whether Alberta follows a similar route, targeting suppliers and payment providers rather than offshore operators directly, will be the next signal of how hard it intends to push.

Hacksaw Group has moved into prediction markets with the launch of a B2B platform that lets operators offer peer-to-peer event trading under their own brands. The Nasdaq Stockholm-listed supplier said on 15 October that the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) had approved an extension of its existing B2B critical gaming supply licence to add Type 3 gaming services, which authorises it to provide peer-to-peer prediction market services under the Maltese framework.

Hacksaw previously held Type 1 authorisation, which covers casino-style games of chance against the house. Type 3 is the MGA category for games where players compete against each other and the operator takes a commission, the same classification used for poker networks and betting exchanges.

How the platform works

According to the company’s announcement, operators keep ownership of their brands, customer relationships and front-end experience, while Hacksaw supplies the underlying technology and infrastructure. The aim is to spare operators the cost of building and maintaining a prediction market product themselves.

The platform includes what Hacksaw calls a connected volume framework, which pools peer-to-peer participation across its operator network. Liquidity is the central problem for any new exchange-style product, and Hacksaw said the shared pool gives operators access to broader capacity from launch rather than leaving each brand to build its own.

The release did not name launch partners or target jurisdictions. Hacksaw said its existing customers include some of the largest private and state-owned iGaming operators across multiple markets, and cited a Bernstein estimate that annual prediction market trading volumes could reach around $1trn by 2030.

“We believe our existing platform, distribution capabilities and operator relationships position us exceptionally well,” said Ana Vrabic Verdir, group chief executive of Hacksaw Group. Marcus Cordes, operational CEO of Hacksaw Gaming, added: “We have created a solution that enables operators to access prediction market capabilities efficiently and at scale.”

Growth moderates in Q3

The launch comes days after Hacksaw published a preliminary update for the third quarter. The company expects revenue of €57.5m to €58.5m for the three months to 30 September, up about 11% to 12% from €52.0m a year earlier. Adjusted operating profit is expected at €48m to €49m, against €42.1m, with an adjusted EBIT margin of about 83%.

Hacksaw said growth had moderated during the period because of softer market conditions and game performance below that of recent quarters, adding that results in its content business naturally vary from period to period. Its long-term financial targets are unchanged, and the full interim report is due on 3 November.

The preliminary figures leave the prediction markets launch as the clearest new growth line Hacksaw can point to when it reports. The company has spent the past year widening its distribution, recently going live with Sazka Hry in the Czech Republic and extending its partnership with bet365 into Spain.

A crowded field

Hacksaw is the latest established gambling supplier to push into a sector that has grown rapidly in the US through Kalshi and Polymarket, where the legal fight between federally regulated event contracts and state gambling law continues to escalate. Outside the US, operators have so far approached the product through existing betting exchange licences. Matchbook, for example, has begun rolling out prediction markets in the UK.

By routing the product through an MGA peer-to-peer licence and selling it on a white-label basis, Hacksaw is betting that regulated European operators will want prediction markets without the build cost or the US regulatory exposure. How quickly operators sign up, and in which markets regulators accept the product as a form of licensed betting, will determine whether the diversification offsets the slowdown in its core games business.