South Africa’s Lottery Licence is Due to Eexpire in May 2025

Bidders must pay R55 000 for access to documents and data around the lottery

SOUTH AFRICA (August 16, 2023) — According to local media reports the current SA Lottery Licence operated by ITHUBA will expire in May 2025.

Ithuba has fended off challenges to its licence so far, but local media outlet ‘Head Topics‘ says that if history holds, there will be a new lottery operator in 2025, with changes to how the lotto runs. For half a year while Gidani’s predecessor and SA’s first operator, Uthingo, challenged being replaced. With every change of operator, the way the lottery runs and the secondary games around it have changed.

The news source reports Ithuba has indicated it hopes to be the first-ever operator to get a second term running the lottery, but Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) told shareholders it has already put together”an exciting bid“.

The scale of the opportunity the lottery represents has traditionally attracted a large number of interested parties, at least in the early stages of bidding, before significant investment is required, headtopics.com.

And that investment is significant. One insider has estimated that putting together a full bid can easily cost at least R15 million, and during the previous adjudication process bidders were required to put up a performance bond of R125 million.

The groups putting up that kind of money reconcile themselves with the possibility of further delays. Ithuba’s licence had been due to run only until May 2023, but was extended because, said the department of trade, industry and competition (dtic), of the exceptional circumstances Covid-19 represented.

As of last week, potential bidders are committed to a timeline that includes the end-August briefings, a deadline of 31 October to pay for access to the data around the lottery (R55 000), and the early-February deadline to submit bids.

However, all those dates are subject to representations and legal challenges and, having extended the current licence once already, it could be hard to argue against further extensions.

SOURCE: Head Topics.