Lotto Loyalty and Lingering Guilt: What the Data Reveals About How South Africans Gamble

South Africa’s gambling landscape is not dominated by casinos or sportsbooks. It is dominated by the humble lottery ticket. New consumer data from YouGov Profiles shows that PowerBall, Lotto Plus, PowerBall Plus and Daily Lotto all rank among the six most-played gambling activities nationally, ahead of most casino games and outright of any single sports betting product. This points to a gambling culture driven less by entertainment and more by aspiration, the hope of a quick change in financial fortune.

Lottery Products Dominate Participation

Roughly a third of South African adults, 32%, say they played PowerBall in the last 12 months, making it the single most popular gambling activity in the country. It is followed closely by slots and soccer betting at 30%, Lotto Plus at 28%, PowerBall Plus at 28% and Daily Lotto at 25%. Only 18% of respondents say they did not take part in any of the listed gambling activities at all, meaning gambling in some form is close to a mainstream, majority behaviour among South African adults.

No single sports or casino product comes close to matching the combined reach of the Lotto family. That imbalance supports a straightforward conclusion: for most gamblers in South Africa, this is about the possibility of a life-changing win, not a night of entertainment.

A Nation That Is Uneasy About Its Own Habits

Despite this widespread participation, South Africans appear conflicted about their relationship with gambling. When asked whether they agree with the statement “I really should gamble less than I do,” 44% agree, while only around 28% clearly disagree. Roughly three in ten sit on the fence.

That is a striking result: nearly half the country’s gamblers are, by their own admission, uncomfortable with how much they gamble.

Opinion on the legality of gambling itself is even more divided. About 42% agree that “all gambling should be illegal,” while a similar share, around 33%, disagree, and roughly a quarter remain neutral. This is a genuinely polarised issue. There is no clear majority in favour of the status quo or of a ban, which suggests the gambling debate in South Africa remains far from settled in the court of public opinion.

Gender Splits: Men Bet on Sport, Women Back the Lottery

The data shows a clear behavioural divide by gender. Sports betting has a stronger male skew with 37% of men having bet on soccer in the past year, compared with just 22% of women. Men also lean slightly more toward rugby, at 12% versus 9% of women.

Lottery-style products, by contrast, lean female. Women are more likely than men to play PowerBall, at 33% versus 31%, Lotto Plus, at 31% versus 26%, PowerBall Plus, at 32% versus 24%, and Daily Lotto, at 27% versus 24%. Women are also somewhat more likely to use scratch-card products, with 10% of women versus 5% of men playing casino scratch cards. Despite these behavioural differences, attitudes toward gambling’s legality and self-control are nearly identical between men and women: 41% of men and 43% of women agree gambling should be illegal, and 45% of men versus 43% of women say they should personally gamble less.

Income Shapes the Type of Gambler You Are

Personal income is one of the clearest dividing lines in the data. Lottery participation is a distinctly lower- and middle-income behaviour: PowerBall participation sits at 39% among the R10,000 to R19,999 band, peaking at 40% among those earning R20,000 to R39,999 a month; this drops to around 21 to 25% for anyone earning R40,000 or more.

Middle-to-upper income earners, in the R40,000 to R150,000 range, are considerably more likely to opt out of gambling entirely with 79% saying ‘none of these’, compared with 42% among lower income earners.

Generational Divide: Traditional Lottery vs Digital-First Betting

Gen X are the country’s core lottery demographic: 39% play PowerBall, 38% play Lotto Plus, and 38% play PowerBall Plus, all above the national average. Gen X are also the most likely generation to abstain from gambling altogether, with 29% saying “none of these,” more than double the Gen Z rate of 12%.

Millennials emerge as the most broadly active gambling generation, over-indexing on sports betting in particular, with 37% betting on soccer compared with 29% of Gen Z and just 18% of Gen X. Gen Z, meanwhile, lean into casino-style products. They are far more likely than Gen X to play roulette, at 18% versus 5%, poker, at 14% versus 5%, video poker, at 13% versus 5%, and craps, at 13% versus 3% — all traditionally casino-floor games, though increasingly available online — while still engaging with the lottery at meaningful rates. Gen Z also over-index on the more genuinely new formats, such as eSports betting, at 7% versus 3% of Gen X.

Self-perceived over-gambling also varies generationally. Millennials are the most likely to say they should cut back, with 50% agreeing, compared with 44% of Gen Z and 37% of Gen X. Gen Z are also notably more neutral on beliefs on gambling legality, with 31% neither agreeing nor disagreeing, than Gen X or Millennials, both of which lean more decisively for or against a ban.

The Bigger Picture

Taken together, the data paints a picture of a gambling culture with two distinct faces. On one side is a financially motivated, lottery-driven mainstream, older, lower-to-middle income, and largely female-skewed on Lotto products, chasing the possibility of a changed financial position. On the other is a younger, more entertainment-driven segment, skewing male and Millennial-to-Gen Z, engaging more with sports betting and casino-style products for excitement rather than necessity. Layered across both groups is a meaningful undercurrent of self-doubt: a large share of South African gamblers, regardless of age or gender, privately believe they should be doing less of it. There is a lesson here for financial services too: the same hope-of-a-better-outcome that pulls lower- and middle-income earners toward the lottery, even as they say they should cut back, is a powerful psychological driver that loyalty programmes and savings products could learn from, by leaning into a sense of chance and possibility rather than pure utility.

Methodology

The data referenced in this article is sourced from YouGov Profiles, South Africa.

Dataset: 2026-08-07

Population: The nationally representative sample comprised South African adults aged 18 and over, with unweighted bases ranging from approximately 945 to 1,051 respondents depending on the question, filtered by gender, generation and personal income band as noted throughout.