Sports betting slump hits Spanish igaming GGR

A slump in sports betting in the second quarter of 2019 led to a 7.85% quarter-on-quarter fall in gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the Spanish igaming market over the three months to the end of June.

However, the continued growth of online slots helped the market to register an overall increase of 6.69% to €178.35m (£160.76m/$196.91m) in comparison with the corresponding period in 2018, according to Spain’s igaming regulator, La Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ).

After posting a 26.2% year-on-year increase in sports betting GGR in the first quarter of 2019 to €101.8m, the total dropped to €86.45m in the three months until the end of June – a 1.32% year-on-year fall, but a 15.08% drop on the previous quarter.

The DGOJ cited a 31.76% decline in traditional fixed-odds wagering and a 4.55% drop in in-play betting in comparison with the first quarter.

The slump meant that sports betting accounted for less than half of the online GGR in the second quarter – 48.47%, down from 52.6% in the first three months of the year.

Online casino GGR increased from €66.40m in Q1 to €69.04m in the second quarter, with the segment accounting for 38.71% of the total igaming GGR in the country, up from 34.7% in the previous quarter.

The growth of online casino revenue – boosted, according to the DGOJ, by continuing momentum behind slots – helped to mitigate declines across a number of key metrics.

Marketing expenditure of €82.5m represented a 1.18% increase year-on-year, but a 10.3% fall in comparison with the previous quarter, with the regulator citing quarter-on-quarter falls of 24.37% and 14.62% in sponsorship and advertising spend, respectively.

Online poker generated €19.36m of igaming GGR in Q2, down from €21.17 in the previous quarter, with bingo also falling from €3.21m to €3.03m.

The number of active igaming accounts was 861,237 in the three months until June 30, a 0.18% increase year-on-year, but the number of new accounts dropped by 12% to 235,920 in comparison with the second quarter of 2018.