It was back in 2016 that I wrote this blog post showing the state of sports betting in Kenya after there had been a major clampdown on leading players in the space over licensing and tax-related issues and thereafter the rise of others who had only just started establishing a serious presence like Betika and Odibets.

I am not much of a gambling man, to be honest, but we do know for a fact that millions of young men in Kenya do bet on football games and see it as a way of being entertained but also as a way of making a quick shilling. Therefore, on this basis, as was the case almost a decade ago, sports betting websites in Kenya continue to attract a large audience who log in to place their bets but also cash out their winnings using mobile money or Safaricom’s M-Pesa to be more precise.

At the same time, we see that there have been many new entrants into the sports betting market in Kenya given its sheer size based on the large number of youth and internet users in Kenya with a large crossover of millions. Kenya is a massive sports betting market for local and international brands in this space. The goal of this blog post is to get a snapshot of sorts circa October 2023 when it comes to understanding the most popular sports betting websites in Kenya using Similarweb.com insights. The results are as follows:

1xBet.co.ke

1XBet is a major global player when it comes to sports betting in Kenya and they have the website traffic to prove. As of October 2023, they had a rank of being the 18th most popular website in Kenya, rising by two from the previous month. This website also had an impressive 5.5M total visits.

22Bet.co.ke

22Bet is one of the older sports betting businesses in Kenya and in October 2023 had a somewhat decent ranking of 141 with a drop of 11 positions. In terms of total visits, the website had 483,000 visits during the same period.

SportPesa.co.ke

SportPesa is the ‘OG’ of sports betting in Kenya having established the market in Kenya almost a decade ago to global acclaim. However, after being shut down in Kenya for an extended period, SportPesa lost lots of ground and at one point did not even have an active website. However, as of October 2023, the SportPesa website was ranked the 12th most visited website in Kenya with 4.2M visits during the same period.

Betika.com

Betika is one of the most popular and well-known sports betting brands in Kenya. As of October 2023, their website was ranked a very impressive second position in Kenya according to Similarweb and at the same time had over 41.2 visits in the same period. This may have to do more with the fact their website is used in other global markets beyond Kenya so this traffic represents more than Kenya only.

Odibets.com

Odibets, like Betika, gained a great deal during SportPesa’s shutdown in Kenya a few years ago and as a result of heavy marketing is now one of the largest sports betting players in the country. From a website traffic perspective, Similarweb picked it up as Kenya’s 4th most popular website as of October 2023 and it also had 20.6M visits. This is an impressive amount of traffic and could also be largely attributed to the same being operational in multiple countries beyond Kenya.

Bangbet.com

Bangbet is one of the newer sports betting entrants in Kenya and they have managed to achieve what seems to be a fairly respectable position of 183 according to Similarweb with 992,100 visits in October 2023. What remains to be seen is how far they can rise given that many of the older brands in the market seem to have lost lots of ground in terms of their website rankings.

BetPawa.co.ke

BetPawa is also one of Kenya’s older sports betting companies having been around almost as long as SportPesa. That being said, given the rise of many other larger players over the years they ranked a respectable 57th most popular website in Kenya as of October 2023 according to Similarweb with a decent 1.1M visits.

Mozzartbet.co.ke

Mozzartbet has been one of the leading sports betting operators in Kenya and have managed to achieve an impressive 8th position in Kenya as of October 2023 that translated into a very healthy 7.7M visits in the same period.

Shabiki.com

Shabiki was one of the later entrants to Kenya’s thriving sports betting space some years ago and some point had a strategic partnership with one of the leading media houses here that gave them a major rise in brand awareness. However, as of October 2023, Shabiki is ranked 366 in Kenya according to Similarweb and had only 279,800 visits.

ChezaCash.com

ChezaCash.com like Shabiki.com was also one of the later entrants to Kenya’s sports betting space and seems to have lost quite a bit of momentum since then as it is only ranged 730 according to Similarweb following a drop of 246 places with traffic of only 39,000 visits. Could they be possibly going out of business or stopped operating or marketing completely?

Betwinner.ke

Betwinner is the last one I looked at and it seems after making a big splash a few years ago in Kenya they are only ranked 3,072 with 36,600 visits in October 2023.