Year-end iGaming success for Portugal

In Portugal and aggregated online gaming revenues for the final three months of last year reportedly hit an all-time high of €113.2 million ($132.9 million) as the sector experienced a huge boost in sportsbetting receipts.

According to a report from iGamingBusiness.com citing official information from the nation’s SRIJ regulator, this figure represented a swell of 74.7% when compared with the €64.8 million ($76 million) chalked up for the same three-month period in 2019. The source detailed that this came as remote sportsbetting overtook online casino games to become local iGaming operators’ main source of revenues courtesy of a fourth-quarter figure that rose by 89.6% year-on-year to reach €64.1 million ($75.2 million).

Persistent progress:

Portugal licensed its first online casino in July of 2016 and has since gone on to authorize a further ten domains including the likes of CasinoPortugal.pt, EstorilSolCasinos.pt and Betway.pt. Such sites reportedly saw their combined fourth-quarter sportsbetting handle increase by 86% year-on-year to €345.6 million ($405.6 million) with wagers on soccer accounting for a massive 86.7% of this amount followed by basketball at 5.2% and tennis at 4.9%.

Slots supremacy:

In terms of online casino games and the Portuguese regulator reportedly explained that approximately 71.1% of this vertical’s fourth-quarter receipts had come from video slots. This ratio purportedly dwarfed the 12.6% of revenues earned from roulette over the same three-month period as well as the 6.4% received from blackjack with poker lying in a lowly fourth position at a mere 4.2%.

Rising registrations:

The SRIJ reportedly divulged that aggregated fourth-quarter handle within the Portuguese iGaming market had rocketed by 69.2% year-on-year to reach €1.76 billion ($2 billion) as some 293,800 new players registered for accounts. However, the watchdog purportedly also sounded a note of caution in disclosing that a further 10,300 people had added their names to its self-exclusion list during the three months from October 1 to take this register’s year-end tally up to 72,400.

Continuing consistency:

iGamingBusiness.com reported that the fourth quarter had represented a second consecutive period of year-on-year growth for the Portuguese online gambling market following an associated 57.9% improvement in aggregated third-quarter revenues to slightly over €49.1 million ($57.7 million). But, the SRIJ purportedly pronounced that the final three months of 2020 had moreover seen it add 49 domains to its list of blocked sites while simultaneously ordering a further 15 to cease offering their services.

Important interdictions:

Finally, the SRIJ reportedly proclaimed that it began taking action against unlicensed iGaming domains in June of 2015 with its ‘blacklist’ of proscribed sites now containing 675 names, which sits alongside its inventory of the 680 enterprises to which it has issued official ‘halt’ notices.