By Zwelethu Dlamini
Three years after Eswatini passed a law requiring the state to monitor gambling harm, conduct addiction research and establish a rehabilitation fund, the country still has no central system to track online betting activity, even as licensed platforms allow users to register without meaningful age or identity checks.
An Inhlase investigation into eBet and MulaSport, two of the country’s major online betting platforms, found that users could enter the betting environment without providing a date of birth, identity number or identity document at registration. On eBet, the only visible age control was a pre-selected checkbox stating that the user was over 18. The checkbox could not be changed. On MulaSport, a separate platform audit found that the date-of-birth field was suppressed in the platform’s production configuration.
The findings raise questions about how Eswatini’s online betting industry is being supervised at a time when government records show the sector is expanding, generating millions of emalangeni in levies, and drawing growing concern from families, mental-health practitioners and Parliament.
Inhlase monitored eBet and MulaSport between August 2025 and April 2026, preserving timestamped screenshots of betting activity displayed on the platforms. On 18 November 2025, at 18:16, MulaSport displayed 4,609 active bets on Aviator. Later that evening, at 22:36, eBet displayed 5,889 active bets out of 5,936. Other observations showed active-bet figures reaching nearly 10,000 at a single moment.
Those figures are not unique-user counts. A single user may place more than one bet, and the counters cannot by themselves establish how many individual emaSwati were betting at the time. But they show that thousands of real-time wagers were being displayed on high-speed betting products available through platforms licensed to operate in Eswatini.
The state regulator says it cannot yet monitor that activity properly.
“Government is behind,” Gaming Control Board chairperson Mandla Dlamini told Inhlase. “We lack systems and resources, including human resources, to implement the law — especially the monitoring part.”
Dlamini said the ministry is working towards a central monitoring system but does not yet have the technical capacity to connect to online platforms.
“The ministry is lagging behind in terms of connecting to the platforms,” he said. “We lack systems to monitor.”
He also confirmed that the rehabilitation fund required under the law has not been established because government has not decided where it should be housed institutionally.
Eswatini brands, foreign engines
The platform audit found that eBet and MulaSport are not, in software terms, self-contained domestic betting systems.
When a logged-in eBet user launches Aviator, the platform redirects to a Bitville-linked domain. The sportsbook, casino and game integrations observed in the audit were served through Bitville infrastructure, making eBet a local-facing brand wrapper over a third-party betting engine. The audit also found that eBet’s game-launch URL used plain HTTP, with a session token transmitted in the query string. No token values were retained by the reporter; the finding concerns the platform architecture and security exposure.
eBet’s own terms also contain South African legal residue. Several clauses refer to South Africa’s National Gambling Act, 2004, the South African Financial Intelligence Centre Act, 2001, and the South African Financial Intelligence Centre website. Another clause refers to “provincial government”, language that does not fit Eswatini’s unitary system. The same terms say withdrawals are paid only into a South African-based bank account in the customer’s name, even though eBet markets itself as an Eswatini platform and accepts deposits through Eswatini-facing channels.
Those references do not prove unlawful conduct. They do show that key legal and customer-facing documents appear to have been adapted from a South African template and not fully localised for Eswatini.
MulaSport shows a different foreign trail.
Its production code contains references to Convex ICT DMCC, a Dubai-linked vendor, and includes remnants of an Ethiopian betting template: an Ethiopian National Lottery licence string, the default brand name “Lengo”, the ETB currency code, Amharic translations, and Ethiopian administrative terms such as Region, Zone and Woreda. The audit also found references to Ethiopian payment processors in the platform code.
These artefacts do not by themselves establish who owns MulaSport or who controls its revenues. That would require company-registry records, vendor contracts and banking documents. But they do show that the platform delivered to Eswatini users was built from a foreign template and carried foreign regulatory and technical residue into the local market.
This matters because the state’s admitted weakness is technical as well as legal. The regulator is not merely trying to monitor a local bookmaker’s counter. It is trying to supervise online products, crash games, mobile-money deposits and third-party gambling engines running behind local brand names.
The law exists. The systems do not.
The Gaming Control Act of 2022 gives the Gaming Control Board responsibility for regulating gambling, monitoring its socio-economic impact, conducting research into gambling addiction, and identifying people affected by gambling-related harm. It also provides for a portion of levies to support a rehabilitation fund for affected individuals.
But the protections remain largely on paper.
There are no finalised regulations, no central monitoring system, no publicly available socio-economic impact study, no published addiction research programme, and no functioning rehabilitation fund for people affected by gambling harm. According to the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs’ 2023 Annual Report, draft regulations were submitted to the Attorney General’s Office and discussed in several meetings, but approval remained pending.
At the same time, government records show that licensing and revenue collection have continued.
Figures presented in the End of Year Performance Report for the 2024/2025 financial year show that E22,934,203 in gaming levies was collected between April and December 2024 from lottery operators, bookmakers and short-term gaming promotions. During the same period, the Gaming Board granted two new bookmaker licences, renewed another for 12 months, inspected ten gaming operations, and issued 42 short-term gaming permits to companies including MTN, Spar, Pick n Pay and Coca-Cola for promotional campaigns linked to gaming activity.
Only 45 individuals voluntarily enrolled in exclusion programmes during that period.
The Ministry has acknowledged concerns about underage gambling. In parliamentary oversight proceedings, Portfolio Committee chairperson MP Welcome Dlamini questioned the issuing of provisional licences to operators that had not met full legal requirements and raised concerns about underage access. The Ministry said it was engaging operators and mobile companies, but did not announce specific enforcement measures.
Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Tourism and Environmental Affairs later noted that all gaming levies were being deposited into the Government Consolidated Fund, rather than being directly used to assist people affected by gambling addiction. The committee recommended that the Ministry be given six months to ensure full compliance with the law, including the establishment of a gambling addiction fund.
Users enter before they are checked
The weak point is visible at the gate.
On eBet, users can create an account by entering a name, phone number and password. The registration page does not require a date of birth, identity number, address or uploaded identity document. The only visible age control is a checkbox stating that the user accepts the terms and confirms being over 18. The checkbox is already selected and cannot be unticked.
That means the platform records an age affirmation without requiring the user to actively make one.
The weakness is made sharper by eBet’s own terms and conditions. Those terms state that a customer wishing to open an account must provide a name, identity number or passport number, residential address and email address, and that no betting account will be created unless the customer’s identity has been conclusively established and verified.
The registration process observed by Inhlase did not match that standard.
MulaSport showed a similar weakness through a different mechanism. A platform audit found that its production configuration suppresses the date-of-birth field at registration. The platform does not collect the basic data needed to test whether a user meets the age threshold before entering the betting environment.
On both platforms, identity checks appear to be deferred to withdrawal. That means a user can register, deposit and gamble before the platform asks for identity documents. The practical effect is that the system is stricter when money is leaving the platform than when money is entering it.
That design is difficult to reconcile with the purpose of age protection. A minor using a parent’s phone, mobile-money wallet or PIN would not necessarily meet an age or identity barrier before losing money.
High-speed betting is not a marginal feature
The platform design also matters.
Aviator and similar crash-style games allow users to place bets in rapid cycles. A player stakes money, watches a multiplier rise, and must cash out before the game “crashes.” If the game crashes first, the stake is lost. Rounds are short. A new round begins almost immediately.
That structure allows repeated betting within minutes.
Inhlase’s platform audit found that crash-style betting is not buried on eBet. More than 50 crash-style games were available, with the category placed prominently alongside sports betting on the main navigation menu.
The risk is not only that users can bet. It is that they can bet continuously, in high-speed formats, before meaningful identity checks intervene.
Private psychologist Ndo Mdlalose described online gambling as a “silent problem” that often begins with small wins and grows into repeated losses.
“People usually win at first, what we refer to as beginner’s luck, and that creates false hope,” she said. “They believe they will win again, so they continue.”
Mdlalose, who has experience working as a treatment practitioner under the South African Responsible Gambling Foundation, said the pattern resembles other forms of addiction.
“This is a serious illness,” she said.
Harm inside households
The consequences are already being described inside families.
In Hlobane, on the outskirts of Mbabane, relatives of a deceased security guard told Inhlase that gambling-related debt had contributed to his distress before his death. The family said he had accumulated debts after prolonged online betting and had reached a point where he could not repay people who were demanding money.
Inhlase has not independently established the full circumstances of his death or all factors that may have contributed to it. The family’s account is included because it reflects the type of harm the Gaming Control Act was intended to monitor and address.
His brother said the strain had already become visible at home. Although the man had steady employment, his income could no longer be accounted for and support for his family had declined.
Mental-health practitioners say such cases are difficult to measure because many people affected by gambling do not seek help.
Nsindiso Tsabedze, Communications Officer at the Ministry of Health, said there is no comprehensive gambling-addiction dataset at the National Psychiatric Centre. He said cases linked to gambling accounted for less than one per cent of clients seen in March, but warned that the figure may not reflect the true scale of the problem.
“There is no such data available at the Psych Centre,” he said. “However, the cases of people seen for counselling due to mental health issues related to gambling addiction are very low as compared to those of substance abuse and others. In terms of March statistics, they form 0.5% of the clients received for assistance. However, this could probably be due to such people not actively seeking help.”
He added that gambling addiction should not be dismissed.
“Gambling addiction is not something to take lightly because it can lead to many social issues as it adversely affects mental well-being,” he said.
In Maphungwane, near Siteki, another family described a different kind of loss. An elderly woman lost E1,800 that had been sent for building materials after the money was diverted into gambling. Relatives said the funds had been sent through mobile money to pay for river sand needed for construction. Instead, the granddaughter tasked with collecting the money gambled it in an attempt to increase the amount.
Family members said it was part of a broader pattern. The same relative had previously lost money linked to a family-run mobile-money business and had been staying with her grandmother after those losses.
Operators say they are responsible
Betting operators present themselves as responsible businesses.
eBet chief executive officer Sibonginkhosi Lukhele told Inhlase that the company “is not a gambling but a gaming company” and said it strongly discourages irresponsible betting while enforcing policies against underage players. “This is emphasizing the importance of realizing that being on our platform is not to get rich but play to enjoy and most importantly be extremely responsible,” he said.
But the company’s statement does not resolve the contradiction between its published terms and its registration flow. Its terms say identity must be verified before account creation; the observed registration process did not collect the information required to do that.
Efforts to get comment from MulaSport were unsuccessful. A questionnaire was sent to the company on 23 April 2026. The company acknowledged receipt during follow-up calls, but no substantive response was received.
Government sees the growth
The growth of online betting is visible in government’s own records.
Market research data cited in the reporting shows that registered online gambling users increased from about 220,000 in April 2023 to about 385,000 in April 2024. Active players rose from about 60,000 to 73,000 over the same period.
That means a large share of Eswatini’s eligible population has registered for online gambling, with tens of thousands actively participating.
The financial returns to government have also grown. Meanwhile, the gambling industry continues to expand. Government figures indicate a 17 per cent increase in gambling revenue, highlighting the sector’s growing economic significance.Additional government records presented in the End of Year Performance Report for the 2024/2025 financial year bythe minister of tourism show that gambling revenues are significantly higher than previously reflected in public statements. The report indicates that a total of E22,934,203 in gaming levies was collected between April and December 2024 from lottery operators, bookmakers, and short-term gaming promotions.
The industry is now visible in everyday life: people betting on phones in taxis, workplaces and queues; social media posts showing winners and prizes; and betting brands presenting gambling as an opportunity rather than a risk.
Yet the public-protection side of the system has not kept pace.
Dlamini, the Gaming Control Board chairperson, said the Board faces two challenges at once: regulating licensed operators and dealing with illegal gambling syndicates.
“There are illegal operators,” he said. “And at the same time we must regulate those that are licensed.”
He said the Board has submitted benchmarking reports outlining possible regulatory models, including the creation of an independent authority or the strengthening of the existing unit. A final decision is still pending.
“The government machinery is slow,” he said.
The unresolved question
The law places clear obligations on the state: monitor the industry, study addiction, assess socio-economic harm, identify affected people, and create a rehabilitation fund. Government is also collecting levies from the same industry.
But the systems meant to protect the public remain incomplete.
For now, Eswatini has licensed platforms that can take users into high-speed betting environments before meaningful age and identity checks occur. It has thousands of active bets displayed on those platforms. It has families reporting debt, loss and distress. It has health officials warning that gambling harm may be underreported. It has a Board chairperson admitting the state lacks the systems to monitor the industry.
What it does not yet have is the protection framework its own law promised.
The betting system is running. The safeguards are still waiting.