The NRGP’s executive director Professor Peter Collins said that according to the National Gambling Board’s report to Parliament, the GGR had increased from R15,6 billion in 2008 to R15,9 billion in 2009.

These figures do not reflect the Lottery spend as this falls under the Lotteries Board and not the Gambling Board. In fact, lottery spending has significantly decreased since the suspension in March 2007 – September 2007.

“The fear that many people are spending more money in casinos during a recession is unfounded as yet, because the statistics quoted refer to the period April 2008 to March 2009 during which time the impact of the recession hadn’t really taken effect.”

Research statistics for 2008 show that:

• Contrary to popular belief, when times are hard, people don’t tend to gamble more in the hope of getting out of financial difficulty: on the contrary, they tend to gamble less because they have less to spend generally on entertainment. This is well documented in relation to gambling revenues around the world, both past and present.

• Since 2005 there has been an increase in the number of people who report that they do not gamble at all. This number is now 47.9% of the adult population sampled. The number of people playing in casinos has decreased and regular (that is on a monthly or more frequent basis) slot machine play has dropped markedly, from 13.9% of the sample in 2005 to 3.7% of the sample in 2008. In contrast, the regular players of Fafi (a traditional township game) have increased from 4.0% to 5.1%.

For the overwhelming majority of gamblers, gambling is harmless entertainment. Intrinsic measures such as requiring credit checks before people could play would be inappropriate and would be likely only to encourage problem gamblers to gamble illegally.