Bid to curb online gambling

The Gauteng Gambling Board has asked Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus to block internet users from using their credit cards for gambling online.

The board has also asked media houses and advertising agencies to pull all advertising for online gambling sites - including Silversands Casino's ads featuring actor Dolph Lundgren, Ed Jordan's Piggs Peak commercials and print adverts for the African Palace online gambling site. It also warns that those who do not will be severely punished - as will those who gamble online.

Last week, the Johannesburg High Court dismissed an application by Swaziland-based Casino Enterprises, which owns Piggs Peak, which argued that it was not subject to South Africa's online gambling ban as it operated outside the country.

Casino Enterprises said gamblers should not be forbidden from gambling at its online casino.

The ruling will see the Gauteng Gambling Board gun for international online casino operators and their customers. As Casino Enterprises also hauled the National Gambling Board to court, the ruling now applies to everyone in the country who gambles online.

The Reserve Bank will now be expected to instruct banks not to authorise credit-card transactions related to online gambling anywhere in the country. The ruling prohibits adverts for online gambling sites on TV, radio, billboards and newspapers.

Edward Lalumbe, Gauteng Gambling Board's chief operating officer, said: "Part of the reason we have been fighting online operators is because we cannot guarantee that a gambler will win. If they do, we cannot guarantee that they will be paid their winnings."

Now banks, broadcasters, advertising agencies and casinos that defy the order face fines of up to R10-million or 10 years in jail, or both.

Anti-gambling organisations have welcomed the ruling, which they said would put the brakes on teenage gambling addicts who use their cellphones and parents' credit cards to flutter online.

Professor Peter Collins, the National Responsible Gambling Programme's executive director, said online gambling was a growing problem, which earned the industry an estimated R500-million a year.

Collins said that internet gambling was a growing problem among addicts.

"We have dealt with people who go to the casino to gamble, and then after hours, they go home to continue gambling online," he said.

Warren Whitfield, Addiction Action Campaign CEO, congratulated the Gauteng Gambling Board, saying: "The problem is that you never know who is on the other side of the line. Gamblers use their wives' credit cards to gamble."

Peter McKenzie, managing director of Oracle Airtime Sales, which handles advertising for M-Net and Multichoice, said he would comment once he had received a notice from the board.

SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago said the state broadcaster had not yet received notice to pull online gambling advertising from their channels.