20% of Kenyan Adults Consider Betting a Good Source of Income

Approximately 20 percent of the Kenyan adult population consider betting a good source of income according to the 2019 FinAccess Household Survey.

The Survey, which was conducted by the Kenya Bankers Association, the Central Bank of Kenya and FSD Kenya revealed that 22.7 percent of men compared to 16.9 percent of women termed betting as a good way of making money.

The report further noted that 69.5 percent of Kenyans residing in rural areas compared to 67.9 percent of those in urban areas do not consider gambling or betting as a good way of making money.

The survey incorporated questions on the use of mobile money account by persons engaged in betting. The mobile money account has advantages due to unique characteristics of convenience and ease of use, privacy, and security of funds.

Overall, 1.9 percent of the population use their mobile money accounts for betting with the proportion higher for males at 2.7 percent and in urban areas at 2.1 percent.

The use of mobile money accounts for betting was reported by 3.7 percent of individuals aged 18 to 25 years, with the lowest use being persons aged 46 to 55 years.

Of the 1.9 percent who responded that they used mobile money for betting, the majority of them placed bets on a weekly basis as shown in the table below:

The Finaccess survey on betting comes at a time when betting and sports-related sites are said to have dominated the top internet search queries in Kenya in 2018, pointing to a gambling craze in Kenya.

Early this year, Hootsuite reported that 11 of the top 20 Google search queries were directly related to betting.

SportPesa emerged at the top of most searched topics. Among the top sports, gambling related sites that featured in the list included Livescore (3), Betpawa (5), Betin (7), Prediction (8), Betika (9) and SportPesa Login (10). Others are Forebet (13), Livescore CZ (17), SportPesa Livescore (19) and Games (20).

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, Kenya is the third largest gambling market after South Africa and Nigeria respectively in Africa in terms of revenues. However, in terms of participants, Kenya could be ahead of its peers in the region.

Based on a 2017 Geopoll survey, Kenya had the highest number of millennials who take part in sports betting in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)