Millennial Capitalism and the Rise of Online Sports Gambling

Sports betting has become one of the most aggressively promoted forms of gambling worldwide (Killick & Griffiths, 2019). Advertisers position it as easily accessible, available anytime and anywhere via mobile phones and other internet-compatible devices (Killick & Griffiths, 2019). Gambling operators often exaggerate the illusion of control to entice potential bettors (Langer, 1975; Griffiths, 1994). This illusion of control is one of the main cognitive heuristics involved in sustaining gambling behaviour and produces an expectancy of success that is inappropriately higher than is objectively warranted (Killick & Griffiths, 2019).

The Unprecedented Growth of Sports Betting in South Africa

The National Gambling Board (NGB) of South Africa released industry statistics for the financial year 2023/2024, revealing an astounding R1.1 trillion turnover in the gambling industry. This figure represents the total amount wagered and marks a 40.2% increase from the previous year. Gross Gambling Revenue (GGR), which reflects the money that gambling operators keep after paying out winnings, rose to R59.3 billion, a 25.7% increase from the previous year. Betting, which includes sports betting and horse racing totalizators, accounted for 60.5% of GGR (R35.9 billion), solidifying its dominance in the gambling landscape.

An analysis of GGR growth across gambling sectors highlights betting as the primary driver of industry expansion. Betting revenue surged by 51.2% from the previous year, whereas casino sector remained stagnant with a 0.1% growth. The bingo industry experienced a modest 3.2% rise, while Limited Payout Machines saw a 1.9% decline. Betting has consistently outpaced all other forms gambling in GGR, with a 45.8% increase from 2020/21 to 2021/22 and a further 53.3% rise from 2021/22 to 2022/23. Long-term trend data on all gambling forms, using 2021 prices, shows that GGR increased from R8.2 billion in 2003/04 to R52.3 billion in 2023/24.

Gross Gambling Revenue per gambling mode in the financial year 2023/24

This growth trend is particularly pronounced during periods of economic downturn. As inflation and rising interest rates place financial pressure on consumers, gambling operators market sports betting as a potential avenue to alleviate financial hardship. In a study conducted in Iceland just after the 2008 financial crisis, it was found that financial distress during economic recessions and times of financial hardship increases engagement in gambling, as individuals perceive it as a low stakes means of achieving financial relief (Olason et al., 2017).

Bitanihirwe et al. (2022) point to the lack of stable employment as a key motive driving the substantial growth of the gambling industry in sub-Saharan Africa. High levels of unemployment, particularly among the youth, have led individuals from this vulnerable stratum of society to turn to gambling due to distorted perceptions or beliefs about the potential of gambling as a viable and sustainable source of income (Bitanihirwe et al., 2022). These unfulfilled expectations, whether for financial security or seeking economic liberation, are strong predictors of gambling-related harm (Bitanihirwe et al., 2022).

Betting operators exploit these vulnerabilities by marketing sports gambling as a 'panacea' to economic hardship, offering hope for a 'better life' with the ‘right tools’ (Bitanihirwe et al., 2022). This rhetoric has led to the normalisation of sports gambling across the continent, particularly among economically disadvantaged communities. The popularity of online betting is reflected in social media discourse, where Twitter posts frequently highlight stories of unexpected wins and losses, reinforcing both the aspirational and cautionary aspects of gambling culture. (Insert selected Twitter posts here to illustrate public sentiment).

Sports Betting as a 'Hustler’s Market'

While the marketing of sports betting is underhanded, bettors engage with it as a strategic economic activity. It exists within what can be described as a ‘hustler’s market’, similar to foreign exchange and cryptocurrency trading. This landscape attracts the street-smart and resourceful, existing on a spectrum from speculative survival to a calculated income stream. Bettors construct identities and public personas that embody modern savviness. This comprises of a bold sense of independence, global awareness, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and a sense of having “been around”.

This dynamic mirrors the study by Harry Dugmore on ‘fahfee’ amongst coloured working-class women in pre-War Johannesburg (1920s and 1930s), where gambling was not only a form of popular entertainment but also a means of income generation in an unjust society. Similarly, Detlef Krige’s analysis of the informal economy and the pursuit of wealth through high-risk and opportunistic ventures in Soweto provides a compelling ethnographic lens into the lives of those operating outside the formal, regulated sectors of national economies (Krige, 2011). In many ways, participants in these markets are applying lessons from financial capitalism itself: the art of “making money from money” (Krige, 2011). Sports betting, in this sense, allows participants to challenge the prevailing capitalist structure by bypassing the constraints of formal employment. It offers an alternative to the “regime of uniformity, discipline, and rationally meted-out reward” inherent in conventional modes of production (Louw, 2017).

Millennium Capitalism and the Rise of 'Occult Economies'

This draws on Jean and John Comaroff’s concept of “occult economies” and the emergence of new forms of risk in what they term “millennium capitalism” to help contextualise the rise of online betting within broader economic transformations. These economic practices challenge traditional legal boundaries, positioning crime as a viable mode of production to those without conventional opportunities or for those savvy enough to exploit the system (online betting is illegal in South Africa, though it is too poorly regulated to be noticed) (Bentley, 2025; Comaroff and Comaroff 1999a, 2000). In postcolonial societies, where trans-local economic networks and free market ideologies have been assimilated, millennium capitalism presents itself as a pathway to prosperity. A capitalism that if skilfully navigated, offers a route to economic success for the marginalised and disempowered (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000:2).

The grand promises of late capitalism and post-apartheid have run up against a postmodern sense of scepticism and nihilism, revealing the harsh reality of a system where aspirations are left unfulfilled. Following post-apartheid's failure to realise widespread prosperity, a new generation of resourceful African entrepreneurs has emerged, determined to break through the societal constraints that once confined them. Public discussions about what was once a taboo subject reveal a long-suppressed lust for the material luxuries apartheid denied, and post-apartheid failed to deliver. This desire reflects a world where aspirations far exceed the means of attainment.

In this context, postcolonial commerce seeks to rupture and dissolve entrenched racial divisions “in its millennial pursuit of virgin markets” (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2008). Thus, online betting, could be seen as an imitation of “post-apartheid liberty” – the liberty to consume and transgress in a world unbound by past moral, spatial or material limitations (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2008).

Millennial capitalism shifts the focus from production to consumption, where the latter becomes the measure and driving force of a society's wealth and vitality. As a result, there has been a decline in the perceived importance of labour and traditional workplaces as the primary means of creating value or shaping individual identity. For a growing number of people, work has become an irregular, menial occupation that in many cases, fails to provide the security and meaningful social mobility it once offered (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000). In this evolving economic order, traditional production appears to have been overtaken by less tangible and more abstract mechanisms of wealth generation.

This shift to peripheral economies reflects a broader rejection of the prevailing economic order, the state’s role in upholding it, the deep-seated social hierarchies that post-apartheid South Africa has failed to dismantle and the dwindling faith that traditional hard work is a path to success (Center, 2012). It stems from a desire to outmanoeuvre and circumvent the elusive forces that sustain widespread inequality – the unseen “mystical machinations of the few” which keep the majority poor (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2008). It also reflects a quest for an earned justice, an act of reclaiming wealth from previous generations who monopolised the means of social and economic reproduction. Yet, unlike these forms of traditional accumulation, which often rely on exploitative labour or environmental harm, these alternative economies present themselves as a more ‘clean’ or ‘chaste’ means of wealth generation, detached from historical injustices.

This dynamic reflects the uneasy intersection between the optimism of "free enterprise encounters" and the stark realities of “neoliberal economics”. Millennial capitalism, as Comaroff and Comaroff (2000) describe, is inherently perplex – combining hope and despair, utility and futility, and the promise of limitless opportunity with the persistent reality of failure (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000).

The enigmatic new wealth derived from financial speculation, intellectual property and digital economies further highlights the growing complexity of contemporary markets. Wealth is now amassed through ‘mysterious’ mechanisms, requiring abstruse technological and informational expertise to navigate it. Value flows at a rapid pace, transcending time and space, merging the local with the global in fluid and often unpredictable ways. These structural transformations of labour not only alter conventional terms of employment, but they also paradoxically contribute to both job creation and joblessness, reshaping the very foundations of work itself (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000).

“As the connection between means and ends become more opaque, more distended, more mysterious, the occult becomes an ever more appropriate, semantically saturated metaphor for our times” - Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming - Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. L. (2000).

A deep sense of impossibility – even despair – is born from exclusion, from being locked out of the promised prosperity and forced to observe the global economy of desire from its impoverished margins (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000). Postcolonial Africa once held the hopeful vision that all would be free to accumulate wealth, speculate in markets, consume without restraint and satisfy long-suppressed aspirations in a world of reduced government intervention, heightened privatization, infinite enterprise and opulence. Yet, for the vast majority, this millennial promise came and went without material transformation, leaving them no closer to the wealth or opportunities they were told would be theirs (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000).

A growing perception is that hidden, almost mystical forces shape or intervene in the production and distribution of wealth, channeling its flow toward a privileged elite – those who have mastered the intricacies of contemporary markets and command financial power (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000). This can be seen from the global expansion of highly speculative market “investment” and the value of stock markets losing all grounding in materiality. Alongside this perception comes a profound sense of erasure and loss. The destabilization of labour, the globalization of corporate management, and the decline of traditional retail economies have further fragmented community and family structures. The increasing commodification of people, bodies, cultures and histories into marketable assets contributes to the growing alienation and loss of human integrity – where quantity replaces quality, and abstraction overtakes the tangible (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000).

What remains are “occult economies”, where the only path to real wealth lies in forms of knowledge and power that transgress the conventional, rational, moral and legitimate boundaries. These economies expand the means of generating value, whether fair or foul, as the grand promises of millennial capitalism collide with an increasingly nihilistic, postmodern pessimism – where the relentless desire to consume far outpaces the opportunity to earn (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000).