Spanish Online Gambling Revenue Spikes 37% in Q3

Spanish gaming regulator DGOJ has released its latest results for the third quarter of 2017, revealing a 37.3% increase in the country’s gambling revenue to €140.5 million ($163.6m) versus Q3 of last year. The figure also represented a 16.6% improvement compared to the previous quarter.
Encouragingly, the industry’s soaring revenue came despite operators spending 3% less on advertising during the quarter, and offering 18.2% less by way of bonuses. While sponsorship costs may have tripled year-on-year, though, the figure is not majorly significant as its expenses totalled a mere €1.9 million.
For the three-month period ending September 30th, sports betting accounted for more than half of Spain’s overall gambling revenues, with the €77 million that the segment generated higher by 37% year-over-year.
The next biggest sector was online casinos games, whose revenue of €43.9 million in Q3 was a 54.2% improvement year-on-year, as well as being 4.5% higher over Q2’s tally. Contributing 50.9% of all casino revenues was online slots, up by 61.7% to €22.3 million, followed by live roulette up 91.3% to €9.1 million, traditional roulette up 16.2% to €6.83 million, and then blackjack up 40.2% to €5.6 million.
Other verticals adding to Spain’s online gambling market in Q3 was bingo, which posted a 30.5% spike in revenue to €2.85 million
Online Poker
Meanwhile, Spain’s online poker sector posted modest growth of 6.8% for the period, with its revenue of €14.7 million giving it a 10.5% share of the country’s overall online gambling market. From that total, poker tournaments noted a 18.7% revenue rise to €8.8 million, while cash games went in the opposite direction, contracting by 7% to €5.9 million.
The country’s poker revenues are expected to experience an improvement next year after a player sharing deal was agreed between Spain, Portugal, France and Italy this summer. Nevertheless, while it seemed like a formality a few months back, some Italian politicians have recently raised concerns over the possibility of an open European poker market deal being used for money laundering. While this has cast doubt on Italy eventually joining the player sharing pool, these claims are being countered by other Italian politicians, as well as gambling experts, such as Valérie Peano and Giovanni Carboni, Partners at European Gambling Lawyers & Advisors. As they explain:
“These concerns do not consider the aim of the agreement itself to share best practices, enhance controls and exchange information to prevent fraud and collusion.”