Lottomatica-Cirsa deal spotlights Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt’s online betting licensing gap

Lottomatica’s agreement to absorb Cirsa, announced on 2 September, folds four Moroccan casinos into one of Europe’s largest listed gambling groups. For PSPs and acquirers, the more interesting detail is not the land-based footprint — it is that Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt still leave private operators without a normal route into online betting.

1. Morocco accounts for about 2% of Cirsa’s revenue and about 4% of its earnings. Cirsa expanded its Marrakech presence last November, and the deal shows that land-based gambling can still attract international investment even where online betting is shut off from private licences.
2. Cirsa’s own IPO prospectus is explicit: “Online gaming only exists for betting, which is operated by a state agency,” it says of Morocco, adding that online casino games “are not allowed”. Neither Cirsa nor Lottomatica has announced plans to seek an online betting licence in North Africa, and on paper the issue is simple: there is no equivalent private licensing route to apply for.
3. The same split exists in Tunisia and Egypt, where governments have focused on prohibition and enforcement rather than opening online markets to private operators. For payment providers, that usually means the commercial opportunity sits next to a legal wall, not through it.
4. In Morocco, sports betting and virtual events are reserved to state-owned Marocaine des Jeux et des Sports (MDJS), which is 90% held by the Treasury and chaired by the sports minister. Its exclusivity reportedly runs to 2036 under an unpublished 2016 convention with the State, while the commercial operation runs under a tendered management contract rather than a licence.
5. MDJS has also gone after offshore betting in court. On 12 January, the Casablanca commercial court ordered Maroc Telecom, Orange Maroc and Inwi to block 19 named betting sites and local payment intermediaries, with a penalty of MAD10,000 a day for non-compliance. The commercial court of appeal later granted a stay on 26 January and, according to Medias24’s 12 February report, annulled the order and rejected MDJS’s claim, ending the daily penalty. MDJS could still appeal.

The numbers are not small: Younes El Mechrafi, MDJS director general, told a parliamentary sport forum in December that illegal sports betting stakes reached about MAD3.5bn in 2024, and that the cost to the state was some MAD700m, split between the national sports development fund and the Treasury. For PSPs, that is the practical signal — these markets are active, but the permitted payment rails are tightly controlled.