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The Direccion General de Ordenacion del Juego – Directorate for online gambling in Spain – has published its 2019 annual report on the Spanish online gambling market.
The review, which has been published every year since 2013, is actually a compilation of the quarterly reports that the DGOJ writes every three months. Nevertheless, on this occasion, it was released later than usual due to the crisis the country is facing.
As in previous years, in 2019, revenue earned by online gambling operators rose again in Spain, this time by 7.07%, to reach a combined Gross Gaming Revenue of €748.24 million. This GGR was mainly driven by the sports betting industry, which netted €378.3 million – 50.50% of the whole amount. € 274 million of the GGR came from the casino industry (36.5%) and € 81.3 million from poker (10.9%), with the remainder coming from bingo and other online contests.
Sports betting grew 3.33% in annual terms, a rate that is modest when compared with previous years. The growth was however very robust within the subcategory of live betting, up 11.67% from 2018. In 2019, in-play betting represented over 60% of the total sports betting that took place online, while pre-match betting accounted for just above 37%.
Deposits, withdrawals and active players are on the increase
The report also highlights upward trends in both the number of deposits and withdrawals made by Spanish players on gambling websites – of those licensed by the Direccion General. Deposits experienced an increase of 15.85% on the year, while the number of withdrawals grew by 20.43%.
Similarly, the monthly average number of active game accounts – those used once per month at minimum – reached 903,274, a growth of 8.64% when compared with the same quarter from the previous year. With respect to the monthly average of new game accounts, in 2019 there were 265,888 new accounts – an increase of just under 4% on the year.
Another figure that increased significantly was marketing expenditure, leaping up almost 12% in annual terms, to €372 million. Almost fifty per cent of this investment was spent on advertising, €183 million; followed by promotions and sponsorships, € 149 million, with the remainder going to affiliation expenses (€ 40 million).
Spending on affiliate marketing grew in 2019 by almost 24% compared to 2018, in line with the upward trend observed in the last three years, where it grew at rates of between 15 and 40% in all cases. Affiliation websites provide analysis and comparison services for gambling companies, as you can find at MisCasasdeApuestas.com, a portal which compares and reviews online bookmakers in Spain operating with a license from the DGOJ.
Likewise, on this site you can also find useful information about internet gambling in Spanish speaking American countries, such as Colombia and Peru. In Peru, the national football league has recently resumed its professional competitions and MisCasasdeApuestas has prepared a selection of the best betting sites in Peru for placing bets online. In addition, the site’s owners are currently working on a section that will cater to bettors that gamble online from Mexico.
