{"id":18602,"date":"2024-04-27T20:05:16","date_gmt":"2024-04-27T18:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=18602"},"modified":"2026-10-09T01:56:32","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T23:56:32","slug":"bet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/bet\/","title":{"rendered":"Sports Betting in Egypt: Between the Dream of Quick Riches and the Reality of Losses and Debt"},"content":{"rendered":"

“A carat of luck rather than an acre of skill.” So goes the popular proverb that Adel Abdel Rahman believed in when, a year ago, he decided to enter the world of sports betting apps, betting on football matches in the hope that luck would help him improve his economic situation and his family’s circumstances amid the grinding economic crisis, rising inflation and high unemployment.<\/p>\n

Adel, 36, who lives in Giza, worked as a builder before the Minister of Local Development issued Decision<\/a> No. 181 of 2020 halting the issuance of building permits. He then found himself forced to find another source of income to feed his family; he supports his wife, three children and his elderly parents. He became a day labourer carrying sacks of cement and sand and moving furniture, but his work, which earns him between EGP 200 and EGP 300 a day (about USD 4.1 to 6.2), is irregular, extremely exhausting and not enough to meet his family’s needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many Egyptian families are suffering the repercussions of inflation<\/a>, which jumped to 35.7% in February 2024, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, in addition to the devaluation of the Egyptian pound<\/a>, which began at the end of 2016 and was repeated in 2022 and then in March 2024, when the dollar jumped on the official market to touch the ceiling of EGP 50 per dollar, before currently stabilising at EGP 47.9 per dollar.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, the unemployment rate<\/a> reached 6.9% in the fourth quarter of 2023, and according to labour force data<\/a>, the unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 9.7% in both the last quarter and the previous quarter of 2023, while in rural areas it stood at 4.8%.<\/p>\n

The sudden wealth that appeared on a friend of Adel’s made him wonder about the secret. His friend told him he had won a large sum of money by betting on football matches on one of the sports betting apps. Curiosity about the app followed him, and the money tempted him to try it.<\/p>\n

“I know it is gambling, win or lose, so I did not risk a large amount. At first I bet small amounts, then I started betting bigger and bigger amounts,” Adel says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sports betting<\/a> is defined as the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome; sports bettors place their bets either legally, through a bookmaker\/sportsbook, or illegally, through privately run enterprises referred to as “bookies”.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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Debts and Heavy Losses<\/h3>\n

Adel did not achieve the quick wealth he had dreamed of, and the same apps destroyed the life and future of 20-year-old Hassan Mohamed, who moved from Mansoura two years ago to live in student housing in Boulaq and study at Cairo University.<\/p>\n

Shortly after enrolling at university, Hassan was introduced through a classmate to sports betting apps, and it seemed tempting to him. At first he made successive profits that tempted him to gamble more; he deposited on the app the money for books and study summaries and the monthly allowance his father sent him, and bet on a number of matches, winning most of them. But he was not satisfied with that and wanted to make a fortune that would enable him to achieve some of his dreams.<\/p>\n

He persuaded his fellow students from outside Cairo who shared his housing to join him in betting, and also persuaded his sister to give him large sums of money to bet with, on the basis that they would split the profits. The easy profits and Hassan’s insistence pushed his elder sister to sell her apartment and give him its value, and that is when disaster struck.<\/p>\n

“I was making gains by betting on the combined results of matches, known as coupons, but in the end it remains gambling and the chances of losing exist, which is what happened to me after ten months of gains. I lost what I had earned and squandered the money from my sister’s apartment, and I was afraid to tell her the truth, so I made up a lie to my family about travelling to study and work in Greece, to get money to gamble with,” Hassan says.<\/p>\n

The university student recounts how he persuaded his parents to borrow EGP 100,000 (about USD 2,000) from a finance company in Mansoura, signing and fingerprinting trust receipts, believing that they were thereby securing the future of their only son and that he would earn money working in Greece and send them money to repay the debt, after which they would buy his two sisters’ trousseaus, and the family’s financial and social situation would improve.<\/p>\n

“I got the money I had borrowed from my parents and made them believe I would travel, then I bet it and lost EGP 180,000 (about USD 3,754) twice in a row. It was not long before my sister found out and my lie was exposed. My whole family cut me off, and I can no longer travel to my village, where I was exposed as a gambler and a liar who stole and squandered his family’s money. I also lost my friends because of betting, and I have had to work as a waiter in a caf\u00e9 to earn a meagre monthly salary to pay for my studies and housing in Cairo,” Hassan adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are no official statistics or information on the number of users of gambling and sports betting apps in Egypt, or on the volume of money Egyptian users trade through them.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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Prone to Addiction<\/h3>\n

Some personalities are by nature more inclined than others to become addicted to betting and gambling, explains Dr Gamal Fayrouz, consultant in psychiatry and neurology, such as psychopathic personalities, characterised by negativity, indifference, disregard for the consequences of actions and lack of feeling, who tend towards drug addiction and committing crimes, in addition to borderline personalities. He adds that most of those who drift into addiction to betting and gambling apps are teenagers and young people who suffer from disturbed communication with their families.<\/p>\n

Fayrouz explains that the thrill these sites cause makes a person addicted to them, especially if he is young, stubborn and eager to win, which pushes him to borrow and then steal to satisfy this desire. He notes that he recently treated about 30 patients addicted to these apps, aged between 12 and 30, most of them teenagers, and some had to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital to isolate them from the internet and from the atmosphere that encourages addiction.<\/p>\n

Dr Saeed Sadek, professor of political sociology at Egypt-Japan University, considers that resorting to betting and gambling sites and apps is linked to dreams of quick wealth, which have not been absent from Arab culture throughout history, as it has known legends and folk tales of poor heroes who achieve quick wealth, such as Aladdin and the Lamp and Solomon’s Ring. He notes that gambling existed in Egyptian society in the 1940s but was confined to the wealthy class and foreigners, while openness and the presence of the internet and social media have made online betting and gambling easy, and some drift into it under the influence of friends and surrounding social circles and in an attempt to keep up with their financial level and purchasing power.<\/p>\n

Sadek stresses the danger of betting and gambling to the family and society, as addiction to them causes social and moral problems, and may lead the person to drown in debt or commit crimes punishable by law, such as theft, in order to gamble and try to make up for his losses.<\/p>\n

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Criminalised by Law<\/h3>\n

Dr Adel Amer, a legal expert and head of the Egyptians Centre for Political and Economic Studies, stresses that betting and gambling are criminalised under Egyptian law, and therefore the websites dedicated to them do not obtain Egyptian licences. Despite this, they have become a phenomenon in Egyptian society, given the global tradition of sports betting, which has become part of the marketing of matches, and what has fed it in Egypt is the spread of poverty and unemployment amid the economic crisis. He calls for regulating betting apps by amending the law issued in 1955.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Egyptian law criminalises gambling and betting, as Article 352<\/a> of the Penal Code states: “Anyone who prepares a place for gambling games and readies it for people to enter shall be punished, together with the cashiers of the said premises, with imprisonment and a fine not exceeding EGP 1,000, and all money and belongings in the premises where the said games are taking place shall be seized and ordered confiscated.”<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Economist Dr Ahmed Shawky, a member of the Egyptian Society of Political Economy, Statistics and Legislation, believes that the current economic crisis and rising inflation have left many citizens needing to make a profit by any means because of the economic situation, which has created the phenomenon of flocking to betting and gambling sites in Egypt. These fall within the shadow economy and negatively affect the state’s formal economy, as they lead to lower production and generate no added value for the state treasury. He warns that these sites carry great risk, producing large losses as well as large gains, and points out that some also chase decentralised digital currencies or mining that operate on a one-to-one mechanism, which are not trustworthy to deal in, carry great risk and are a major haven for money laundering.<\/p>\n

He adds: Some go to unlicensed and unreliable investment and money-trading apps, which fall within the informal economy that increases inflation, and some of them defraud citizens. He points out that some borrow from finance companies to bet or trade money online, then lose it and are unable to repay, creating the problem of non-performing debts in the financing portfolio, which, when their proportion rises, lead to the bankruptcy of non-bank financial companies and harm GDP.<\/p>\n

While many young people in Egypt are still obsessed with sports betting and see it as a refuge amid the economic conditions, others are still suffering the economic, social and psychological consequences of their addiction to betting. The phenomenon remains new to Egyptian society and needs to be highlighted, researched and quantified, and awareness raised about its potential dangers, but in the end it remains one of the symptoms of the side effects of the economic crisis the country is suffering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some young Egyptians turn to sports betting hoping for quick riches amid unemployment, inflation and low wages, only to face heavy losses and debt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":8890,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[409],"tags":[19913,19909,19915,10781,19911,19912,19910,19914,19908,5359],"kateb":[1550],"class_list":["post-18602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics-en","tag-article-352-penal-code","tag-betting-apps","tag-debt-from-gambling","tag-egypt-economic-crisis","tag-gambling-addiction","tag-inflation-egypt-2024","tag-online-gambling-egypt","tag-quick-wealth-dream","tag-sports-betting-egypt","tag-unemployment-egypt","kateb-aya-yasser"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/\u0631\u0647\u0627\u0646-\u0632\u0627\u0648\u064a\u0629-\u062b\u0627\u0644\u062b\u0629.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18603,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18602\/revisions\/18603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18602"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=18602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}