“A drug”, that’s what industry veteran Martin Sack called the iGaming industry, adding, “you either get in and you wash out quickly, or you’re in it for life”. Sack clearly belongs to the latter. For over 15 years he’s worked in both executive and consulting roles, across online casino, sports betting and online poker. 

Sitting down with Sue Schneider on the SBC Leaders Podcast, Sack walked through his career inside one of the most complex and dynamic iGaming markets in the world.

The Capetown based consultant never set out to work in gambling. The opportunity came “at the Passover table”, where a family member needed some technical help running a micro poker room. Sack went away and researched what needed to be done. 

In the end, he was asked to operate. Dream Poker ended up running for two years before the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006) in the US shut it down. 

“The truth of the matter is, like many people, the majority of our business was in the States at that time. And without that we had to sell” said Sack.

South Africa: “A Force in the Industry”

The South African market was once considered a leader in the international poker and casino market. 

“I divided the world into four,” Sack said, “South Africans, Israelis, the British and the Swedes. And each brought a different take on how they ran their operations”. For Sack, the South African micro-gaming market had a flavour all of its own and benefited from intelligent operators with an ability to get things done.

Today, South Africa’s regulated market is still benefiting from that same backbone that drove early success. For anyone trying to hire senior bookmaking talent out of the country today, Sack was frank: the contact list has gone global. He claimed you’re more likely to find South African operators in Malta, than in their native South Africa.

South Africa itself represents an interesting regulatory case study. 

Online casino gaming remains technically illegal under the National Gambling Act 2004, yet a functioning online market exists, built on a workaround that treats slot spins and roulette wheels as fixed odds bets.  

Draft bills to formally regularise the space have been in circulation for the better part of eight years, but as Sack pointed out, “The wheels of government grind slowly”. In the meantime though, Sack isn’t worried, “right now we have a workable model […] the GGR in the country is significant, around R3.5bn” ($212.6m). 

For Sack, the strength of the South African market is that its associations are “very active at being proactive” in advocating for change, education and better rights for operators and players.

The Wider African Market.

The picture gets more complicated on the broader continent. Africa has attracted enormous operator interest in recent years, but Sack’s message to anyone thinking about entering is simple: stop saying Africa.

“You don’t come to Africa, you come to one of just over 90 different jurisdictions, each with their own languages, payment methods and betting patterns,” he asserted. If operators want to divide the continent, Sack recommends three categories: French-speaking Africa, Portuguese-speaking Africa and the rest treat as English speaking. 

Sack highlighted Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda as strong markets, while Angola and Mozambique are emerging as serious players. 

Mobile money dominates payments across much of the continent and platforms that aren’t built for low bandwidth and agent systems will struggle. Sack’s advice for new entrants is blunt: “You can’t be doing it sitting in your office in Malta. It’s a boots-on-the-ground thing.”

Sack’s Advice for the Future

Asked by Schneider to give advice to the next generation coming into the industry today, Sack’s advice was structural. Become a generalist. 

“If you’re in retention, understand what acquisition does. If you’re in payments, understand risk. If you’re commercial, learn product and regulation,” urged Sack. For him, the broader the view an operator can get of the industry, the more able they will be at growing their career. 

Less positive was his outlook on AI and the overall impact it will have on the industry, “They want a senior person to control the machine. But how do you become senior if you were never junior first?” 

But this isn’t to say AI doesn’t have its place. “The smart man without AI is likely going to have a problem,” he added.

It is a question the industry hasn’t answered yet.

Sack is now consulting alongside his long-time collaborator Lois Sprite, after a bout of cancer in 2025 that, by his own admission, made him rethink going it alone. The focus now is on sharing knowledge, mentoring, and building something that outlasts any individual engagement.

Watch the full interview on the SBC Media Youtube channel, or linked below.