High Court rules TAB soccer and rugby betting is legal

The totalisator soccer and rugby betting offered by Phumelela and Kenilworth Racing is completely legal.

That was the verdict on Tuesday in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria where Judge L M Molopa-Sethosa ruled that the totalisator sports betting fell within an exclusion in the Lotteries Act.

This permits Phumelela and Kenilworth Racing to conduct tote pools on sports outcomes in the same format and manner and under the same circumstances as that which regulated horseracing prior to 18 June 1997.

Judge Molopa-Sethosa’s ruling follows an application by the South African Bookmakers’ Association (formerly the KwaZulu-Natal Bookmakers’ Society) and the Gauteng Off-Course Bookmakers’ Association to have the totalisator soccer and rugby betting declared illegal.

The bookmakers contended that the totalisator sports betting offered by Phumelela and Kenilworth Racing constitutes sports pools in terms of the Lotteries Act and that only the national lottery operator could conduct such sports pools.

They sought an interdict restraining Phumelela and Kenilworth Racing from offering totalisator sports betting.

But Judge Molopa-Sethosa would have none of it.

“I am in respectful agreement with the interpretation preferred by the Phumelela respondents,” Judge Molopa-Sethosa ruled.

The judge added that “on a conspectus of facts I cannot find any reason why the legislature would have intended to preserve totalisator betting on horseracing but not on other sports”.

Judge Molopa-Sethosa not only dismissed the bookmakers’ application, but ordered them to pay the costs of Phumelela and Kenilworth Racing, “such costs to include the costs consequent to the employment of two counsel in respect of the . . . respondents”.