Spain’s igaming market put in an impressive performance in the first quarter, despite the shutdown of sporting events from the middle of March impacting betting activity in the tail end of the period.
GGR rose to €217.97m, which represented an 18% rise on the fourth quarter of 2019, as well as a 12.8% rise on the same period last year.
All verticals performed strongly during the first quarter, with both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter rises across the board.
Casino revenues were up by 8.47% on the final quarter of 2019 and 15.64% on the same quarter the previous year.
Sports betting was also ticking along nicely until March, when revenues fell to €27.13m having been above €40m for the previous two months.
Despite the pandemic-induced fall in GGR, betting revenues were still up by 23.15% on a quarter-on-quarter basis and 9.71% on a year-on-year basis.
Poker also enjoyed strong growth, rising 20.76% on a quarter-on-quarter basis and 14.31% on a year-on-year basis. Interestingly, there seemed to be am immediate increase in poker activity in Spain as sports betting dried up.
Having recorded GGR of €7.51m and €6.52m in January and February, respectively, the figure jumped to €10.17m in March, the highest monthly total for more than four years.
The beginning of the lockdown period also saw a noticeable jump in new player registrations – in March the number of new players reached 338,032, the highest ever monthly total.
Overall, in Q1 new player numbers were up by 5.6% year-on-year but down by 2.6% on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
Though the revenue numbers remain low in comparison with other verticals – GGR was just €1.88m in the quarter – bingo enjoyed strong year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter growth of 14.69% and 38.23%, respectively.
Ficom Leisure also provides exclusive monthly estimates on the Italian online market in the Italy iGaming Dashboard, including operator market shares across casino, sports betting and poker.
It also provides monthly estimates on several US states, including New Jersey in the New Jersey iGaming Dashboard, Pennsylvania in the Pennsylvania iGaming Dashboard, Indiana in the Indiana iGaming Dashboard and Iowa in the Iowa iGaming Dashboard.
European corporate advisory firm Ficom Leisure is a specialist in all segments of the betting and gaming sector.
