Senegal's online betting market in 2026 is unusual in West Africa because the dominant brand by player count is not the state operator. 1xBet Senegal — the Curacao-licensed global brand we cover with appropriate caveats — sits at #1 with roughly 26.4% of monthly active players (about 260,000 accounts) in our independent analysis (±10%), and despite a -1.2% year-on-year decline it remains comfortably the largest brand on the market. Lonase Bet, the digital arm of LONASE (the state lottery), sits at #2 with 14.6% share and 140,000 players but is the fastest-growing large brand at +124% year-on-year, suggesting that the regulator's recent push to develop its own online product is starting to claw share back from offshore competitors.
Below the top two, Mojabet holds 13.4% share with 132,000 players (+27.4% year-on-year), Premier Bet has 8.5% with 84,000 players (-4.7% year-on-year), Betclic (the Francophone-Africa specialist that leads the Ivorian market) is in early Senegalese rollout at 1.92% with 19,000 players (+69.8% year-on-year), and betPawa trails the top six at 1.04% with 10,400 players (+11.7% year-on-year). Compared to Côte d'Ivoire, the Senegalese market is less concentrated — no single brand dominates the way Betclic does in Abidjan — and the state operator has a more meaningful presence here than in either Morocco or Tunisia, where the state-versus-private split looks completely different.
Three structural forces define the Senegalese market. First, the Wave effect: Senegal's mobile-money landscape is dominated by Wave (the free-transfer mobile wallet that has reshaped Senegalese e-commerce), with Orange Money and Free Money behind it. Operators with weak Wave integration lose deposits at the cashier and operators with strong Wave integration win the casual end of the funnel. Second, the LONASE regulatory question: 1xBet is the market leader despite operating primarily under a Curacao licence rather than a clear LONASE permit, which has put the brand in a grey area that Senegalese players should understand. Third, the Francophone-Africa expansion playbook: Betclic and similar French-rooted brands are entering Senegal with the same approach that worked for them in Côte d'Ivoire — French-language editorial and deep top-tier football coverage — and are growing fast off small bases.