Portugal’s gaming regulator, the Serviço Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos do Turismo de Portugal, or SRIJ, has published iGaming numbers for the first half of 2020. Online gaming earned €139 million (US$164 million), an increase of 44 percent over 2019, when iGaming brought in €96 million (US$113.4 million), reported CDC Gaming Reports.
Online casino turnover came to €1.3 billion, up 39 percent over the previous quarter, and revenue for Q2 was €48.4 million, compared to €35.3 million for the first quarter of 2020. Online casino turnover for the first half was €2.3 billion. Revenues peaked at €479.3 million in April and dropped to €372 million in June.
The highest number of players recorded was in March with 60,000. The lowest count was in May with 33,500. The SRIJ said the new industry has shown it’s able to “resist and adapt” despite the upheaval caused by Covid-19.
Despite the growth in revenue, sports betting stakes declined 1.5 percent to €239.9 million. Online casino stakes, meanwhile, grew roughly in line with revenue, to €2.29 billion.
“We can conclude that the closure of the casinos contributed to a significant increase in the respective volume of online gambling, which gradually stabilized, approaching the values prior to [the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic,” the SRIJ said.
“This reality seems to indicate a preference of the players to bet in a regulated and controlled environment, because even though they are ‘used’ to frequenting physical spaces to play, they chose, instead, to play on legal online sites.
