Spain’s gambling regulator, the DGOJ, has published data about the local industry’s performance in the third quarter of the year. As the local advertising regulations eased up and operators’ marketing spending increased, the industry recorded significant growth.
Spanish Gaming Continued to Grow
According to the DGOJ, Spain’s overall gambling sector reported $366.3 million for the quarter, marking an increase of 14.4% year-on-year. The aforementioned figure is also 0.5% higher than the industry’s GGR in the previous quarter.
The authority added that the revenue from Spain’s casino sector stood at $194.8 million. Casino gaming remained the main driver of revenue and was responsible for approximately 54% of the total GGR. Casino gaming experienced a growth of 17% year-on-year.
Sports betting, on the other hand, recorded $143 million in revenue, comprising 39.1% of the total GGR figure. While betting revenue couldn’t quite catch up to the spectacular results recorded in Q2 2024, it was 19.8% higher than the revenue in Q3 2023.
In the meantime, $21.6 million of the GGR came from poker. The vertical, unfortunately, continued to fall out of favor, recording a 23.5% decrease in revenue year-on-year.
Bingo gaming remained mostly stable and recorded $3.9 million in revenue, up 1.7% year-on-year.
The aforementioned figures were based on the performance of Spain’s 77 legal operators.
Players Were More Engaged
In the meantime, player deposits increased by 23.9% year-on-year to $1.2 billion. Withdrawals, on the other hand, increased by 30.3% to $844.2 million, according to the DGOJ’s report.
The increase in deposits and withdrawals also reflects an increase in participation as in Q3, a total of 459,543 new gambling accounts were opened. This marked an increase of 42.4% from Q3 2023 and increased the total number of accounts to 1.44 million. However, it should be noted that this doesn’t necessarily reflect the number of players, since some players have accounts with multiple operators.
In order to attract players and keep new ones, operators invested heavily in promotions. The DGOJ said that operators spent approximately $139 million on marketing, which included almost $14 million spent on affiliation expenses, $1.4 million on sponsorships, $70 million on promotions and $53 on advertising.
In other news, Spain’s Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and 2030 Agenda recently declared that the country has sanctioned 15 online gambling operators in the first half of 2024. These sanctions resulted in fines totaling $69 million.
