In the 2012 National lottery generated R4.7 billion in sales of Lotto and Powerball tickets.

[3] Lotto is the most popular type of gambling in South Africa[4] but Powerball has been the faster-growing for last years due to its high payouts.

[citation needed] After a marketing effort that aimed to reach 80 percent of South African homes directly[5] more than 800,000 tickets were sold in the first day of availability[6] Nearly R70 million worth of tickets were sold in the first three weeks of operation.

[7] In October 2002 operator Uthingo suggested a daily lottery to supplement the weekly draw.

The concept, called Keno, was rejected by the trade and industry ministry in March 2003.

[9] In July 2006 the Gidani consortium, featuring Greek company Intralot as a technical partner, was judged the preferred bidder to operate the lottery for seven years starting April 2007.

[10] In March 2007 the Pretoria High Court set aside that award on application by incumbent Uthingo, finding that the failure to adequately investigate the shareholders in some bidding consortia left room for conflicts of interest.

[14] Gidani introduced scratch cards, but they were discontinued for several months when they lost their licence to Ithuba.

This caused controversy with members of the public accusing the lottery of corruption or collusion with the 20 winners.

[15] 8 games operate under the South African National Lottery brand: Players buy tickets with their choice of six different numbers between 1 and 52; there is provision for random numbers to be generated automatically for those who do not wish to choose, known as Quick Pick.

All players who match all six drawn numbers win equal shares of the jackpot; the chance of doing so is 1 in 20,358,520.

The draw is conducted on Wednesdays and Saturdays on SABC 2 at 20:56 Central Africa Time (CAT).

The draw is conducted on Wednesdays and Saturdays on SABC 2 at 20:56 Central Africa Time (CAT).

The draw is conducted on Wednesdays and Saturdays on SABC 2 at 20:56 Central Africa Time (CAT).

The results are mostly published at the South Africa lottery website at 21:05 pm but on Television they are aired at 20:58 to 21:00 .

South African National Lottery announced that there would be a once-off raffle for Christmas 2016.

[27] In 2020, it was reported by GroundUp that people close to senior executives of the National Lottery, including its chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda,[28] had improperly benefited from the charitable distribution fund.

[30] The stories of corruption and improper benefit resulted in a government investigation of the National Lottery.

MPs from the ANC and EFF in parliament supported those implicated in previous corruption scandals.

The board, led by Commissioner Jodi Scholtz and Barney Pityana, sought to root out corruption in the National Lottery and restore integrity and transparency to the NLC.