Lets Get Ready To Rumble

About Lets Get Ready To Rumble

Botswana’s regulated betting market has expanded quickly following the Gambling Authority’s 2023 process to license bookmaker and totalisator operators, including online betting subject to regulatory approval.

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.

About Lets Get Ready To Rumble

A fraudulent ad directing consumers to an unlicensed offshore operator highlights the exact issue Alberta sought to address by adopting an Ontario-style regulated iGaming model.

Dale Nally, Minister of Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction, has repeatedly emphasized that the primary objective of launching the province’s regulated market on July 13 was to offer consumers safe alternatives to illicit offshore sites operating out of jurisdictions like Malta and Curaçao.

“Standing still was not the responsible choice,” Nally said when the market launched. “Albertans were already gambling. What we’re putting in place is a regulated market that will put player safety and player responsibility first.”

About Lets Get Ready To Rumble

The bulk of the work revolved around compiling and codifying the technical information in one place, Eberwein said. There were some existing Technical Standards, but other requirements lived in the state’s Minimum Internal Control Standards, which are a broad mix of technical and procedural requirements.

The goal is to make it easier for licencees to find technical information in one definitive source rather searching across multiple libraries. Most of the explanatory notes in the revisions refer to adaptations from MICS and other sources. This process has been years in the making, Eberwein said, with work stopping and starting at various points.

“We had various iterations of the drafts internally probably going back at least a decade, and just never made it to the finish line for various reasons,” he explained.