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.

Michel Groothuizen, chair of the Dutch gambling regulator the Kansspelautoriteit (Ksa), has said the authority is prepared to take one of the big technology platforms to court over illegal gambling advertising if cooperation does not deliver results. For now, he said, the Ksa will keep working with the platforms.

Groothuizen set out his position in a signed blog post on the Ksa website on 14 October, titled “Seduce or fight? Or both?”. The post comes as the Dutch regulated online market marks five years since it opened in October 2021.

Pressure from parliament and industry

The regulator has faced growing calls to take on the very large online platforms directly. Groothuizen noted that VVD MP Bart Bikkers urged the Ksa to fine big tech firms during a parliamentary committee debate on gambling in September. Gambling lawyer Justin Franssen has made a similar case in public.

Groothuizen did not dispute the underlying problem. He wrote that the platforms earn “horrendous” sums from illegal gambling advertising. He said the Ksa could gather enough evidence that they facilitate banned activity, including adverts served to people on the Cruks self-exclusion register and to under-18s, “in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands” of cases.

Both Dutch law and the EU Digital Services Act offer grounds for action, he said. Enforcement of the Digital Services Act against the largest platforms sits with the European Commission, however, so the Ksa can only supply the Commission with evidence under that regime. Any case the Ksa brought itself would rest on national law.

Why the regulator is wary of litigation

Groothuizen gave several reasons for caution. A lost case is worse than one never started. A fine is “a means, not an end”. And the platforms have almost unlimited resources and would fight to the highest court, so a final ruling could take around five years.

Instead, the Ksa and several other European regulators met Google and Meta in Dublin, where both companies have their EU headquarters, in the spring. Groothuizen said both sides understood that litigation was the alternative to cooperation. A joint task force has since been set up. One product of it is a “white list” of all licensed operators in the EU, being compiled with Google. Any operator not on the list would by definition be advertising illegally and could be blocked.

The Ksa has no permanent allies among the platforms, Groothuizen wrote. If their efforts fall short, “the legal route naturally always remains open”. He added: “If agreements with Big Tech yield too little, we will not hesitate to enter the arena against one of them. Hold us to that.” The quotes are translated from Dutch.

The illegal market problem

Groothuizen said about 90% of Dutch online gamblers play only with licensed operators. In money terms the picture is worse: for every euro staked legally, roughly another euro goes to the illegal market. In a blog post in September he put the resulting tax loss at more than half a billion euros.

Fines against unlicensed operators send a signal, he said, but are “frustrating” to collect, because many of those operators are based in jurisdictions such as the Comoros. For the past 18 months the Ksa has focused on making illegal sites harder to find and on blocking payments to them. It has also asked for powers to block illegal websites.

The licensed industry has not waited. VNLOK, the trade body for Dutch licensed online operators, has brought a case against Meta in Amsterdam. It alleges that the vast majority of gambling adverts on Meta’s platforms come from unlicensed operators and that few are removed.

Groothuizen’s post leaves the Ksa’s options open. The test will be whether the white list and task-force work visibly reduce illegal advertising before parliament’s patience runs out.

Taiwan has blocked domestic access to the websites of prediction market Kalshi and crypto exchange Coinbase over suspected betting on the island’s upcoming local elections. It is the latest government outside the US to move against event-contract platforms.

The block was requested by Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, part of the National Police Agency, and approved by a court in New Taipei, according to Bloomberg, which reviewed the ruling. The order authorises Taiwan’s communications authorities and its domain registry to cut off access to both sites. Some Coinbase users in Taiwan reported problems reaching the exchange from 14 October, a day before the order became public.

Election betting ban

The legal basis is Taiwan’s Public Officials Election and Recall Act, which prohibits gambling for profit on the outcome of elections and recalls. A 2023 amendment raised the penalties to up to six months in prison for bettors and up to five years for those who run election wagering.

The action comes six weeks before Taiwan’s local elections on 28 November, when voters will choose mayors, county magistrates and councillors across the island. The bureau said the blocks were meant to protect election integrity and to prevent “overseas interference”, without giving further detail. Authorities have not alleged that either company handled funds from mainland China, and have not set out publicly how either breached the law.

Coinbase was reportedly caught up because of its partnership with Kalshi, which lets Coinbase users trade on Kalshi’s event contracts, including markets on elections. Coinbase said it was investigating the access problems. Kalshi said it does not permit trading from Taiwan, according to the trade and crypto press.

Taiwan has acted against prediction markets before. Polymarket was blocked under the same law ahead of the January 2024 presidential election, and at least one Taiwanese user who bet on that race was charged before receiving a deferred prosecution.

Pressure at home too

The Taiwanese block lands in a week when Kalshi’s chief executive warned that tighter state control in the US could drive the sector abroad. Speaking at DC Fintech Week in Arlington, Virginia, on 14 October, Tarek Mansour argued that prediction markets should remain under federal oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

“It’s not a choice of state versus federal market. It’s a choice of whether prediction markets exist in the U.S. or whether they go offshore,” Mansour said, as reported by CoinDesk.

That argument is being tested in the courts. The federal appeals courts are split: the Third Circuit sided with Kalshi against New Jersey, while the Sixth and Ninth Circuits have backed state regulators. New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to take the case, with support from the NFL and 39 states. Kalshi is litigating in around 20 states and operates under court-ordered restrictions in several, including Nevada, Massachusetts and Michigan.

Election markets carry particular political sensitivity. Earlier this year Kalshi suspended and fined three US congressional candidates for trading contracts on their own races, which it described as political insider trading.

What it means

For operators, the Taiwan case is a reminder that a CFTC-registered status in the US gives no cover abroad. Many jurisdictions treat election wagering as a criminal matter, and blocking orders can extend to partners that distribute the contracts.

Website blocks of this kind are often porous: reports suggest access varies by mobile carrier and can be bypassed with a VPN, and it is unclear whether the Coinbase app is affected. But the court order gives Taiwanese police a clear basis to pursue local users who bet on November’s results, which is likely to be the more effective deterrent.