Ghana Betting Barometer / October 2026 edition
That is how many Ghanaians bet, depending on which study you read. Every figure gets quoted as fact, yet they measure different people over different periods. We lined them up so you can see why.
of Ghanaian adults on GeoPoll's mobile panel bet on football in the past 12 months, second only to Kenya among six African markets.
of Ghanaian bettors place their bets on a mobile phone.
of Ghanaian bettors are men, the most male-dominated audience of the six markets.
tax withheld on winnings since Parliament repealed the 10% betting tax in March 2025.
A youth survey counting anyone who has ever placed a bet will always land higher than an adult survey counting sports bets in the past year. Read each dot with its question in mind.
None of these samples is weighted to Ghana's national population. Mobile-panel surveys reach phone users only; the Oforikrom study covers one municipality. Sources are listed at the end of this page.
GeoPoll asked the same questions in six markets in June and July 2026. Ghana ranks second for participation and sits in the middle for high spenders.
Share of all respondents. Scale 0 to 100%.
Share of active bettors. Scale 0 to 20%.
Among young people in Oforikrom who bet in the past year, football dwarfs every other sport. Crash games such as Aviator are the new competitor: across the six GeoPoll markets, 13% of bettors now name them as what they play most. GeoPoll does not publish Ghana's share separately.
Share of 464 young people who bet in the past 12 months.
A 10% tax on winnings became one of the most debated levies of the 2024 election campaign. Government records show GH¢80 million was collected before Parliament scrapped it.
Frequency is what health researchers watch. In Oforikrom, 33.6% of young people had bet in the past 30 days. Across the six GeoPoll markets, 55% of bettors play at least weekly and 28% daily or more.
In the Volta Region, researchers found links between gambling severity among young bettors and depression, anxiety and stress.
BMC Public Health, 2024
In Greater Accra, an exploratory study of 100 young bettors looked at how betting frequency and borrowing to bet relate to psychological distress.
Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health, 2026
Betting is for adults only. If it stops being fun, take a break and talk to someone you trust. Betting in Ghana is regulated by the Gaming Commission of Ghana.
Journalists, researchers and bloggers are free to republish these charts and figures. Please credit GambleCode with a link to this page.
Charts, infographic and data file © GambleCode, licensed under CC BY 4.0. You may republish them with credit to GambleCode and a link to this page. Figures quoted from third-party studies remain attributed to their original sources.
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We compiled every published estimate of betting in Ghana we could trace to its original source and recorded who was asked, what was asked and over which period. We did not adjust or weight any figure. Where a source does not state its period, we say so.
