Online Poker Struggles In Spain

Online Poker Struggles In Spain

Friday, 19 February 2016

The online poker market in Spain is continuing to decline despite the nation’s online gambling sector as a whole recently reporting a significant increase in gross revenues for the final three months of last year.

According to figures from the Directorate General For The Regulation Of Gambling (DGOJ) regulator, the overall online gambling sector in Spain recorded gross fourth-quarter revenues of €94.76 million ($105.16 million), which represented a boost of 44.54 percent year-on-year. The report also detailed that this was a 12.58 percent rise when compared with the €84.18 million ($93.41 million) the industry brought in for the third quarter of 2015.

The DGOJ additionally revealed that punters deposited €242.07 million ($268.63 million) online during the fourth quarter, which was an increase of 39.71 percent year-on-year and 17.63 percent higher when compared with the third-quarter figure.

However, online poker seems to have been absent from this boom with fourth-quarter gross gaming revenues falling by 12.46 percent year-on-year to €14.56 million ($16.15 million).

But, the news for Spanish online poker is not all bad as the sector’s gross gaming revenues for the fourth quarter did increase by 0.98 percent when compared with the third quarter's €14.42 million ($16 million) while local operators remain hopeful as neighbouring countries reportedly ponder the possibility of sharing player pool liquidities.

Should legislators approve such proposals, sites in France and Portugal would be permitted to share liquidity with those in Spain and provide significant boosts in traffic and revenues.

At present, PokerStars would seemingly be the best positioned to take advantage of such a change in legislation as it operates the biggest poker room in Spain and the second largest in France behind local domain Winamax.



Tags: Spain, DGOJ, Winmax, PokerStars, Directorate General For The Regulation Of Gambling