Guinea’s gambling culture sits at the meeting point of a Muslim-majority society that views games of chance with caution and a state that has turned betting into a consolidated, monopolised revenue source. The everyday face of gambling is football betting and the PMU horse-race pools, alongside the national lottery run by the Loterie Nationale de Guinée (LONAGUI). The sector modernised after 2019, and since January 2023 it has had its own regulator, the ARSJPA — which has since acted against non-compliant offshore operators. Religious and social attitudes keep gambling a contested pastime, and much of the detail below is qualitative because published data on Guinea’s market is limited.

A short history

Organised gambling in Guinea is comparatively recent and state-centred. The Loterie Nationale de Guinée (LONAGUI) was created by decree D/2000/028/PRG/SGG on 28 March 2000, initially acting mainly as a regulatory body rather than running games itself. According to LONAGUI’s own history, it launched its first own product — a PMU horse-race pool — in 2019, and later added lottery and sports-betting products.

A pivotal shift came in 2022. A May 2022 presidential decree reaffirmed LONAGUI’s exclusive rights over lottery and sports betting distributed through physical retail networks, and the state terminated the concession of the large private operator Guinée Games by decree, with LONAGUI taking over commercialisation across the retail network from mid-August 2022. The move was contested by Guinée Games but upheld on the basis that the state could terminate the concession in the general interest.

Regulation and enforcement

In January 2023, a presidential decree created the ARSJPA to regulate, control and supervise the whole sector, separating the regulator role from LONAGUI as operator. The regulator has since shown it will enforce: in late December 2023 it announced the suspension of 1xBet and Yellobet from 1 January 2024, with local media citing their refusal to connect to its control and monitoring system. This underscores that Guinea’s market is restricted and licence-driven, not an open free-for-all.

The most visible forms of gambling reported in Guinea are football sports betting, the PMU horse-race pools and the LONAGUI lottery and instant-win products. Online casino play is a smaller and newer segment. We did not find reliable published participation figures, so these should be read as a qualitative ranking rather than precise market data.

Attitudes

Guinea is a Muslim-majority country, and games of chance are discouraged in Islamic teaching, so a degree of religious and social caution surrounds gambling. At the same time, state-backed betting and football wagering are popular and visible, especially among younger men. The result is a coexistence of participation and disapproval rather than a single settled attitude.

You must be an adult to gamble legally in Guinea. If gambling stops being fun or starts causing harm, seek help from a qualified local health service or an international problem-gambling support service such as those listed by GamCare (begambleaware.org).

Sources