Portuguese Online Gambling Revenue Soars in 2021

We recently reported on Finland’s announcement that they will be dismissing 200 staff members from the government-owned gambling agency Veikkaus and redrafting the contracts of more than 800 additional staff members due to the sectors poor financial performance.

In contrast to the Finnish monopoly, Portugal’s Gaming Inspection Regulation Service (SRIJ) has adopted an open market stance by regulated the gambling market and allowing international offshore operators to acquire customers and air advertising on local media channels.

The result of their gambling-friendly approach has been that Portugal experienced record results in 2021, which stands in stark contrast to Finland’s failed attempt at running a fiscally viable gambling monopoly over the same period.

 Big Results, Bright Future

Like every other casino and betting market, Portugal had to accept the inevitable losses which occurred due to the global pandemic.

However, as the world has recovered some of its equilibrium this year, they have seen an incredible reversal of fortune in Q2 2021 with the gambling market ending 81.9% up over its Q2 2020 results.

This increase in revenues was driven by a monstrous 224.5% spike in sports betting revenues and a substantial lift in the region’s new player account numbers across all gambling types.

In total Q2 2021 saw 151,900 new player accounts being registered in Portugal. The flip side to this growth in account registrations is the expected increase in self-exclusions. In this case, self-excluded accounts increased from 56,600 in Q2 2020 to 93,600 in Q2 2021.

What’s Hot in Portugal?

We decided to take a deeper look at what exactly is popular with Portuguese gamblers in 2021. To truly understand the market, we both online and offline gambling segments, including betting.

• Online casino: Revenue for this channel grew by more than 20% to nearly €58 million with nearly 80% of the interest coming from online slots fans. The biggest online table game was roulette which contributed only 10% of the market’s revenue.
• Sports betting: Revenues for Q2 grew by €47 million with nearly 78% of all bets being placed on football matches. Tennis and basketball were a distant 2nd and 3rd place with approximately 10% and 9% market share respectively.
• Retail gambling: This market segment gained the lion’s share of its growth from gaming machines which grew by 159% to just short of €25 million. As with online casino games roulette proved to be a popular table game for retail generating €1.5 million for the quarter.

It will be an interesting time for Portugal’s online gambling sector as the retail sector begins to open to the community once again. If the pattern we’ve seen in other European markets holds true they should see a normalisation of their offline revenues while online grows to become its own force in the region.

For more information about Portugal iGaming License visit the license page.