Sun International's online brand, Sunbet, has officially launched its services in Namibia, marking its third market entry in Africa. This initiative comes through a partnership with Bede Gaming, which powers the operator's platform.
The collaboration with Bede Gaming began in 2017, and it also supports Sunbet's operations in Botswana and South Africa. Sunbet entered the Botswana market in 2024.
Simon Gregory, CEO of Sunbet, expressed confidence in harnessing Sun International's strong brand recognition across Africa to facilitate growth in other markets on the continent. "We experienced significant success after our debut in Botswana, so rolling out Sunbet to the Namibian market was the natural next step for us, especially given that Namibia is one of South Africa’s strongest trading partners," Gregory said. He added that the company is eager to establish a solid presence in Namibia while providing the same reliable service that customers have come to expect in their other markets.
By the second half of 2025, the Bede-powered platform in Botswana reported impressive growth, with registrations increasing by 189%, unique players up by 239%, and total wagering and gross gaming revenue rising by 370% and 350%, respectively.
Focusing on its online strategy, Sun International revealed its fiscal year 2025 results in March, reporting a group income increase of 7.1%, reaching R12.9 billion ($794.7 million) when excluding the effects of the lease cessation for the Table Bay Hotel. Sunbet stood out significantly, with its full-year income soaring by 75.9% year-on-year to R2.1 billion, and adjusted EBITDA increasing by 109.6% to R744 million.
Ulrik Bengtsson, CEO of Sun International, announced plans to increase Sunbet’s share of South Africa’s online sector from the current 4.5% to 9%. In a follow-up discussion, he highlighted the importance of investing in both personnel and product to meet this ambitious goal.
Bengtsson stated, "It starts with strategy and the actions we are taking to drive towards our economic goal, which we also outlined on the Capital Markets Day. But then it comes quite quickly down to people and capabilities and making sure that across the organization we have the right set of capabilities to take us in the direction we need to go. The executive team, so the people around me, we have mostly put a new team in place. But of course, there’s a lot of work still to be done in various parts of the business to be ready to go in line with that strategy." He noted that Sun International is primarily pursuing an organic growth strategy but did not rule out potential mergers and acquisitions in the future. "Of course, once we have some of the components in place that we should have in place in terms of technology, that opens up the opportunity to do acquisitions in a different way," he remarked. "We’re not quite there yet, but that’s a potential scenario once we get a little bit further down the road."
