Portugal grants sports betting licence
The local gambling regulator granted the thirteenth licence to a sports betting operator.
Portugal.- Serviço Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos do Turismo de Portugal (SRIJ), Portugal’s gambling regulator body, revealed that it has granted an online sports betting licence to SAS Social Betting, Gaming and Gambling Online, SA.
SRIJ’s licence will allow SAS to operate online sports betting under the Placard.pt domain, which officially launched this week. The site is the offline brand of state lottery monopoly Santa Casa da Misericordia de Lisboa (SCML), which revealed its intentions to apply for a licence a couple of years ago. The launch comes a few days before the 2018 FIFA World Cup starts in Russia, and SCML expects a big volume of customers after the competition ends.
The online gambling market has achieved a year-on-year boost in the Portuguese market, which completed its first year of legal operations in 2017. The first three months of 2018 saw online gambling operators generate €33.8 million, which is €2.5 million higher than the same period in 2017. However, the number is €2.7 million lower than the previous quarter (17Q4).
Online sportsbooks finished the first quarter with flat results, as they generated €17.4 million, but approximately €3m less than the fourth quarter of 2017. The most popular sport continues to be football, as it accounted for over three-quarters of the total betting turnover, followed by basketball and tennis, with 10.6 per cent and 9.6 per cent of the market respectively.
