Online gambling in Portugal generates record quarterly profits

According to industry reports, sportsbetting contributed significantly to the record-breaking sum of €113.2 million ($132.9 million) earned by Portugal's online gaming industry in the fourth quarter of last year.

iGamingBusiness.com said that official data from the country's SRIJ regulator showed that this was an increase of 74.7% compared to the €64.8 million ($76 million) recorded in the same quarter of 2019. According to the source, this shift occurred as a result of remote sportsbetting surpassing online casino games as the primary source of profits for local iGaming operators in the fourth quarter, with revenues reaching €64.1 million ($75.2 million).

Constant advancement:

In July of 2016, Portugal authorised its first online casino, which included the domains CasinoPortugal.pt, EstorilSolCasinos.pt, and Betway.pt, among others. Bets on football accounted for an enormous 86.7% of this sum, followed by wagers on basketball at 5.2% and tennis at 4.9%, according to reports that such sites' aggregate fourth-quarter sportsbetting volume increased by 86% year-on-year to €345.6 million ($405.6 million).

Power in the slots:

According to the Portuguese regulator, video slots accounted for around 71.1% of this industry's revenue in the fourth quarter. Poker came up at a dismal fourth with a measly 4.2% of total earnings, well below the 6.4% won from blackjack and the 12.6% earned from roulette during the same three-month period.

Increases in enrollments

With an estimated 293,800 new players signing up for accounts in the fourth quarter, the SRIJ allegedly revealed that the total quarterly handle in the Portuguese iGaming sector had skyrocketed by 69.2% year-on-year to €1.76 billion ($2 billion). The regulator apparently reportedly struck a note of warning when it revealed that a further 10,300 names had been put to its self-exclusion list in the three months beginning on October 1, bringing the total number of persons on this register as of December 31 to 72,400.

Consistency that persists:

According to iGamingBusiness.com, the Portuguese online gambling industry grew by 57.9% in the third quarter, with total revenues increasing to just over €49.1 million ($57.7 million) in the fourth quarter. However, the SRIJ supposedly said that it had added 49 domains to its list of blacklisted sites and ordered another 15 to cease supplying their services in the final three months of 2020.

Significant bans:

Last but not least, the SRIJ has purportedly announced that it has begun taking action against illegal iGaming domains in June of 2015, with its 'blacklist' of prohibited sites currently numbering 675 names. This list sits alongside its inventory of the 680 firms to which it has sent formal 'stop' warnings.