In the finance sector, the market experienced a significant rise in the fourth quarter, reaching €113.2m. This represents a 34.4% increase compared to the previous quarter and a substantial 73% growth compared to the same period in 2019. A major contributing factor to this surge was sports betting, generating €64.1m of the total revenue. Sports betting alone witnessed a remarkable increase of over 50% compared to the previous quarter, and an impressive 92% rise compared to the same period of the previous year.
Football emerged as the favorite sport amongst bettors, accounting for a substantial 86.7% of turnover. Following at a considerable distance, basketball constituted 5.2% of the market share, while tennis held 4.9%. It is noteworthy that bettors eagerly returned to sports betting after the Covid-19-related shutdowns, propelling the vertical ahead of casino in the quarter. In fact, sports betting represented 56.6% of the market, the highest percentage observed since 2017.
Despite not reaching the same level of growth as sports betting, casino revenue also attained record-breaking figures in the fourth quarter of 2020. The gross gaming revenue (GGR) reached a new peak of €49.1m, demonstrating a notable increase of 17.7% compared to the previous quarter and 53.4% compared to the same period in 2019. Among the various casino games, slots accounted for the majority with 71.1% share, followed by French roulette at 12.6% and blackjack at 6.4%.
Interestingly, while Portugal did not experience the same surge in poker activity as other markets during the sports betting hiatus in the previous year, it did witness a decline in poker engagement since the return of sports betting. The market shares for both cash and tournament poker saw further decreases in the fourth quarter, following significant drops in the third quarter. Cash poker experienced a 30% decline, whereas tournament poker suffered a substantial 87.5% decrease in their respective market shares compared to the previous year.
The data and figures presented in this analysis have been processed by Ficom Leisure, a leading European corporate advisory firm specializing in the betting and gaming sector. These figures are based on the official release by the Serviço de Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos (SRIJ), the Portuguese regulator. For additional interactive datasets and comprehensive information, please scroll down.
Ficom Leisure offers monthly reports on the New Jersey and Pennsylvania online markets, available through the New Jersey iGaming Dashboard and Pennsylvania iGaming Dashboard respectively. Further, quarterly reports on the Spanish online market are provided in the Spain iGaming Dashboard, alongside monthly reports on the Italian market available in the Italy iGaming Dashboard.
