Regulated online casino industry shows strong growth in Portugal

The opening three months of 2018 have been fruitful for the regulated online casino industry in Portugal, with the seven licensed sites announcing a revenue of €16.4 million.

The figures were released by the Portuguese regulatory body Servico Regulacao e Inspecao de Jogos do Turismo de Portugal on Friday and showed a €2.5 million increase on the first quarter of 2017.

Since regulating the gambling market in May of 2016, there have been five sportsbook licenses, seven online casino licenses and one poker license granted, with the latter going to Pokerstars. In total €33.4 million was generated by these sites across all gambling verticals.

The picture was not so rosy for the regulated sports betting industry in Portugal with the first quarter of this year generating €17.4m in revenue. This figure was close to €3 million less than the final quarter of 2017.

Making the landscape tough for sports betting operators is a 12% betting turnover tax. In other countries the tax will be calculated on revenue, rather than turnover. This means it has been hard for local bookies to compete with foreign operators marketing their wares to to Portuguese locals.

In terms of sports betting popularity, football accounted for three quarters of the turnover. Basketball (10.6%) and tennis (9.6%) are the other prominent sports with market share.


Online casinos and poker generated a revenue of €16.4m for the quarter, which was up 18.4% year on year. This figure was inflated by the SRIJ issuing three more casino license since this time last year.

The figures show that slots (55.7%) make up the biggest part of the casino revenue, while poker, French roulette and blackjack are also prominent.

In total Portugal’s regulated gambling market lured 89,300 new customers in the first quarter of 2018, with 890,000 in total a member of a website. From this total around 2.45 have self excluded because they have a problem with gambling.