About this app
What is Lion Festival?
In January 2024, before locally licensed online operators were active, the Authority said it had recorded about 510,000 monthly cases of Botswanans participating in illegal online gambling.
Sunbet Botswana launched its online sports-betting platform in February 2025 and reported a 4,700% increase in sign-ups during its first month. As this was an operator-reported figure, the company did not publicly disclose the comparison baseline or absolute number of registrations.
The Authority said licensed operators accepted P150 million in wagers in March 2025, paid P135 million in winnings and generated P15 million in gross gambling revenue. It also estimated that only about 40% of Botswana’s estimated 550,000 active bettors were using licensed local operators, leaving a substantial share of demand with unregulated platforms.
What is Lion Festival?
“Most operators have worked constructively with us to address historical issues and improve their practices,” Scott said.
“While we’ve made substantial progress, our work is not finished. We’ll continue working with operators to recover funding for communities, improve compliance and maintain public confidence in the integrity of class 4 gambling.”
Alongside the recovery of NZ$11.5 million, the DIA also took action against the class 4 gambling society One Foundation.
What is Lion Festival?
Spectrum found that BitCasino.com and Stake.com were knowingly offering its games in these banned markets, which were specifically prohibited within their contracts with the supplier.
These sites were found to be connected to Evolution clients, B2B aggregators Hub 88 and Babylon.
“Our investigation revealed certain clients had allowed for Evolution’s game content to be provided on their online gaming websites in clear violation of their contracts, which expressly prohibited such game play in specified regions,” the report states.
