Gambling has a long and healthy history in South Africa. Sports betting has always had a massive following, particularly when it comes to rugby and horse racing, and casino gambling is a popular activity. In fact, one of the largest casinos in the world is the Rio Casino Resort in Klerksdorp.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for South African gamblers though. Since the 1965 Gambling Act that banned all gambling (except betting on horse racing), the government has slowly been legalising various forms of gambling. It has been a very gradual process. While online sports betting was legalised in 2004, online casinos are still forced to operate in a legal grey area.
This spring, the Democratic Alliance Party introduced a bill that would fix that and fully legalise and license online casinos that met regulation standards. Passing this bill would be a huge step forward for South African players and the start of a healthy online casino industry in the country.
Until then, players still have plenty of online casinos to choose from. Without a regulatory body establishing guidelines, players need to find other ways to figure out which online casinos are reputable and safe to play at. One of the best tools for players to achieve this is online casino guides.
These guides are compiled by experts who have tested and researched the online casinos and provide honest feedback based on their experiences. This has become a thriving industry because so many players are looking for good advice. Unfortunately, not every review site is entirely honest. Some give biased reviews. Others are simply out of date or are focused on American or European online casinos with no accurate information specifically for South African players.
PlayCasino is one of the most trusted online casino guides. They’ve been operating since 2009 and focus only on South African online casinos. Many people consider them to be the best place for unbiased reviews in South Africa. Today, we’re going to evaluate what they have to offer.
By closely examining their website, standards and practices, and comparing them with other trusted online casino guides, we’ll determine whether PlayCasino is the best site to use for online casino reviews.
The team behind PlayCasino
The first thing to consider when evaluating a casino guide is the people behind it. Their expertise and knowledge are what determines their ability to accurately judge an online casino. PlayCasino has a small team, but each member has their own specialisation. This lets them cover each aspect of the sites that they review.
Alongside PlayCasino’s staff, who are experts on casino games and local casino industries, they also have contributors who are experts regarding e-payments, sports journalism and responsible gambling. A balanced staff is a strong one. The team also has a strong leader under its editor, Ilse Lotz.
Most of PlayCasino’s leading competitors have similar variety when it comes to their staff. It’s reassuring to see how many companies understand the value of expert specialisation.
Website reputation
PlayCasino has a very strong reputation among South African online casino fans. They have established this reputation by offering clear reviews of online casinos that include all the relevant information. They have also updated and redesigned the entire site twice since it was launched. This is important because it means they have kept the site contemporary, which many people find reassuring.
Some sites leave space in their reviews to include comments and reviews from actual users. Sometimes these are comments that the reviewer has copied regarding the site, while for others it’s in the form of a comment section. This allows regular users to share their experiences and paints a more complete picture of what experiences at the online casino are like. PlayCasino doesn’t include anything like this. While not necessary, it would be an improvement.
Review process
The key online casino features that the team of experts at PlayCasino examine are security, game variety, user experience, bonuses and promotions, payment methods and withdrawal speeds, fairness and responsible gambling, and reputation.
Alongside their team of experts, PlayCasino also employs anonymous players. These players create accounts and play. They then report back on their personal experiences with the online casino site. This allows PlayCasino to present a more nuanced view of each of the casinos.
When comparing their review process with the review processes of similar guides, PlayCasino comes out on top. They are more transparent about the steps they take during the review process from start to finish. However, they could strengthen their set of responsible gambling protocols and suggestions.
Overall usefulness
The entire purpose of a casino guide is to provide useful information to players and potential players. Being interesting and engaging is an added perk, but it’s the usefulness that really matters when considering the quality of the site. Casino reviews are the main aspect of this but there can be other factors too, such as information on payment methods, how games work and the rights that players have.
I spent some time navigating around the PlayCasino site and I found it to be very useful. The casino reviews include all the important information needed to decide whether you want to make an account with an online casino. The other parts of the site are also easy to find because they are arranged in sections in a bar across the top of each page on the site.
User interface
How a website looks might not seem to be very important, but it can really impact user experience. A simple website may be boring, but it will also be easy to find all the information on it. A website that doesn’t work well or takes forever to load will be frustrating for users and less likely to convince them of anything or hold their attention.
In my experience, PlayCasino has a good website. The pages load quickly and there aren’t too many unnecessary pop-up ads. The colour scheme is neutral, and all the headings are clearly set out. The main issue with the site is how long some of the pages are. Users can get distracted easily when a page is too long.
Overall, the way that PlayCasino’s site is laid out doesn’t contribute to bias against any particular casino. Ratings can be sorted in several different ways, so the same casinos don’t always appear at the top of their lists.
Consistency
A lack of consistency is one of the best indicators of bias. For example, if a guide marks one casino down for not having enough payment options but doesn’t mark another online casino the same way then that could be a sign of bias.
When I looked at the casino reviews on PlayCasino, I found a high level of consistency across the reviews. As an example, the reviews for both Springbok Casino and ZAR Casino dock them points because of minor usability issues with their mobile apps. They are also similarly consistent across reviews when they’re discussing the payment methods that each casino offers.
Scale
The scale of a casino guide site is an important factor to examine. If an online casino guide has relatively few staff and has only been around for a short time, it isn’t reasonable for them to have detailed and accurate reviews of hundreds of online casinos. It’s also hard to expect an online casino review site to be able to accurately evaluate online sportsbooks. The only exception is if they also employ sports betting experts.
There are 81 casinos with reviews in the PlayCasino South African casino directory. Since PlayCasino has been reviewing online casinos for over 15 years, it’s understandable that they’d have produced numerous reviews. At least five different contributors have written reviews for PlayCasino as well, which is also in the site’s favour.
We would appreciate if PlayCasino included the date of when a review was written and if it has been updated since the original publishing date. This would give players some insight into whether things might have changed or to trace changes over time. This is one of the only concerns we have about the accuracy of PlayCasino’s review. However, since none of their reviews are dated, it’s a general concern and not one of bias.
Despite the lack of dates, in our estimation, the scale of PlayCasino accurately reflects the length of time it has been in operation and the number of staff members the company employs.
Final thoughts
PlayCasino is one of the top casino guide sites for a reason — it has a strong reputation thanks to years of reviews by a team of industry experts. No review site will get everything right every time, and PlayCasino is slightly let down by not being transparent about when each of their reviews is written, updated and edited.
Overall, PlayCasino is a site that South African players can trust for their online casino reviews. In my examination of the site, I may have found some minor issues, but I didn’t find anything that suggested that they were biased in how they reviewed online casinos.
