Portugal’s online GGR leaps 83% in Q1 2021
Sports betting rockets 102% year-on-year as new player registrations continue to rise
Portugal’s online gross gaming revenue (GGR) grew 82.6% year-on-year (YoY) in Q1 2021 as sports betting skyrocketed, according to the latest data from the country’s regulator.
SRIJ data revealed Portugal’s online gaming market returned €128.3m in GGR for Q1, up from €70.2m in Q1 2020.
Sports betting GGR leapt 101.7% YoY from €34.5m in Q1 2020 to €69.5m in Q1 2021.
Football accounted for 81.3% of all sports bets placed during the quarter, with the Portuguese domestic league, Premier League and La Liga the three largest competitions.
Basketball was the second largest sport (9.2%), with tennis coming in third place (5.6%).
Additionally, online gaming GGR rose by 64.2% YoY from €35.8m in Q1 2020 to €58.8m in Q1 2021.
New player registrations jumped to 329,400, up from 157,400 in Q1 2020, with the figure also increasing quarter-on-quarter from 293,800 in Q4 2020.
At the conclusion of Q1 2021, there were 86,100 self-excluded players in Portugal, a significant increase from the 52,100 who had self-excluded by the end of Q1 2020.
Of these self-excluded players, 88% chose to self-exclude indefinitely, with 12% choosing to self-exclude for a pre-defined period.
Elsewhere, the ISPs of 86 operators were blocked by the regulator during the period, while 15 letters were sent by the SRIJ to illegal operators targeting Portuguese players without a licence.
Since the implementation of the safety measure in the Iberian nation in 2015, 710 letters have been issued, while 761 sites have been blocked.
EGR revealed this week that Portugal is set to be the “headline” territory in Google’s next set of Play Store real-money gaming app repeals.