Sports Betting and Gambling Law in Kenya

Sports betting is one of the biggest drivers of Kenya’s gambling sector, and it now sits entirely inside the licensing and advertising regime created by the Gambling Control Act, 2025. But the Act itself treats a bet on a football match no differently from a bet on a card game or a slot machine outcome. It has no bookmaker category specific to sport, and, more importantly for sports federations and clubs, it does not touch match-fixing at all. That gap is being closed separately, through an amendment to the Sports Act rather than to gambling law. This guide sets out where sport actually appears in the Gambling Control Act, and where a sports organisation needs to look elsewhere.

Sports Betting Sits Inside the General Licensing Regime

A business that takes bets on sporting fixtures is, in the Act’s own terms, either a bookmaker or an operator of pool betting: the Act defines a bookmaker as a person who carries on the business of receiving and negotiating bets, and defines pool betting as bets made on terms that winnings are determined by reference to the stake money paid by other bettors, whether or not on a fixed-odds basis. Neither definition singles out sport. A fixed-odds sports betting operator, an operator of a football pool, and an operator taking bets on an unrelated game of chance are all licensed under the same framework administered by the Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA), the same real-time monitoring and reporting obligations, and the same advertising approval regime. We cover the licensing categories, fees, and the sector’s transition timeline in detail in our guides to betting, gaming and lotteries licensing and the 2026 gambling regulations. What follows here is the part of the Act that treats sport differently, not a repeat of that general licensing ground.

Sport and Game Lotteries: A Distinct, Narrower Licence

Section 55 of the Act creates a licence category most general gambling summaries skip past: a lottery incidental to a sport or game. This covers the raffle or prize draw a club runs alongside a sporting event, not a bet on the event’s outcome. The GRA may licence a person to organise and manage such a lottery, and the licence itself must state which lottery, tied to which sport or game, the licensee may run. The Authority can attach conditions covering how the lottery is conducted, the hours the premises may be open, the suitability and conduct of the premises, protecting participants against fraud, responsible gambling measures, and any admission fee, which is itself subject to tax under the Entertainment Tax Act. A club or federation running a raffle at a match day, rather than a betting operator taking wagers on the match itself, is the party this section is actually written for, and it is a separate licence from the bookmaker or pool betting licences that cover conventional sports betting.

Sponsorship and Advertising: Where Betting Meets Sport Directly

The clearest sport-specific rules in the Act sit in Part X, on advertising. Section 87(1) prohibits promoting a gambling advertisement without GRA approval, and lists the channels that count as promotion. Paragraph (e) names, specifically, “advertising gambling by organizing, promoting or sponsoring a sporting event.” A betting company that sponsors a football club’s jersey, a league, or a tournament as a way of advertising its gambling products is doing something the Act treats as regulated advertising activity requiring the Authority’s approval before it happens, not something that falls outside the advertising regime because it looks like ordinary commercial sponsorship. Any sports organisation negotiating a betting company sponsorship should treat that approval as a condition the deal depends on, not a formality the sponsor will simply handle.

Section 87(2) then sets separate content rules for any gambling advertisement that does run, and one of them is built around sport specifically. Gambling advertisements are barred from television and radio between six in the morning and ten at night, a broadcast watershed aimed at protecting children and vulnerable viewers, except during a live sporting event, which is carved out of the watershed entirely. In practice, a televised match is one of the few windows where a betting advertisement can legally air during the day. That carve-out is also why in-play betting advertising is concentrated so heavily around live sport rather than spread evenly across the broadcast day. The same subsection bars gambling billboards close to a learning institution and requires that twenty per cent of any aired gambling advertisement be dedicated to promoting responsible gambling, both of which apply to sports-linked advertising exactly as they apply to any other gambling advertisement.

What the Gambling Control Act Does Not Cover: Match-Fixing

Search the Gambling Control Act, 2025 for match-fixing, manipulation, or a sportsperson-specific offence and you will not find one. The Act regulates the business of taking bets; it does not create an offence for the athlete, official, or insider who corrupts the event being bet on. Kenya is closing that gap through sports law rather than gambling law. The Sports (Amendment) Bill, 2026, sponsored by nominated MP Irene Nyakerario Mayaka, passed the National Assembly on 19 August 2026 and is now awaiting presidential assent. It inserts a new definition of “manipulation of a sports competition” into section 2 of the Sports Act, covering, among other things, misusing insider information for betting or manipulation purposes and facilitating, inducing, or threatening a person to engage in manipulation. A new section 64A makes participating in, or aiding, enabling, or assisting manipulation an offence carrying a fine of up to one million shillings, imprisonment of up to one year, or both, with proceeds of manipulation subject to forfeiture. Where a professional sports person or club is involved, the relevant club or association may forfeit the match in question, be declared ineligible for a different competition, or, under a separate disciplinary track, face a lifetime ban from participation in regulated gaming or sporting events imposed by the relevant regulatory body, which is the point where this sports-law offence and the gambling licensing regime actually meet. Sports Kenya also gains a new function to receive reports of suspected manipulation and investigate them, in collaboration with other investigative agencies, within six months, with appeals from Sports Kenya’s manipulation decisions added to the Sports Tribunal’s jurisdiction. None of this sits in the Gambling Control Act. It sits in the Sports Act, once the amendment receives presidential assent, and a federation, club, or sponsor working only from gambling law compliance will miss it entirely.