Spanish gambling revenue down 5.6% year-on-year in Q2

The quarter suffered from low sports betting margins, with sports betting revenue down 33.8 per cent.

Spain.- Spanish gambling revenue was down by 5.6 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter, coming in at €203.9m. The drop was due to low sports betting margins, which caused revenue to fall despite an 8.6 per cent increase in stakes.

Operators held on to less than 2.5 per cent of stakes in the quarter. Sports betting stakes rose 5 per cent year-on-year. However, sports betting revenue was down by a third year-on-year and by 6.7 per cent sequentially at €60.9m. There were low margins across all bet types: 2.6 per cent for pre-game bets, 1.8 per cent on in-game bets and 4.8 per cent on horse racing.

Online casino performed better with revenue up 17.3 per cent year-on-year to €117.2m. Slots generated €71.4m, a rise of 23 per cent. Live roulette generated €34.1m (up 15.4 per cent), random-number generator roulette €6.2m (down 5.9 per cent) and blackjack €5.4m (down 3.9 per cent).

Online casino stakes reached €3.74bn. Bingo revenue rose 2.7 per cent to €3.4m and poker revenue rose by 10.8 per cent to €22.5m.

Spending on gambling marketing was down 30.3 per cent year-on-year at €89.6m. Spending on sports sponsorship logically plunged due to Spain’s ban, falling 95.1 per cent to €375,479. Affiliate spending was down by 21.4 per cent to €7.9m.

The online gambling trade association Jdigital has urged the government to review Spain’s gambling advertising ban to make it fairer and more proportionate. Its call comes after the Supreme Court ruled that the advertising restrictions should be subject to a constitutional review.

A Royal Decree introduced in November 2020 restricts gambling advertising to between the hours of 1am and 5am, including on YouTube, and bans all gambling sponsorship in sport. On social media, operators can only show ads to their followers. They must also use age-gating to limit minors’ exposure to gambling ads.

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