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bars, and Madrid led the way in allowing video slots in 2009, a policy since adopted elsewhere.


Online gaming Officially, the online gaming market in Spain to date has been small, with about ¤45m spent annually on lotteries and some sports betting. However, it is estimated that a far greater figure – as much as ¤1.6bn – might be spent with foreign operators illegally taking Spaniards’ bets. There are believed to be around 370,000 Spaniards betting online. This, and of course the pressing need for the fiscally-strapped


country to raise new revenue, have led to the biggest change in the Spanish market for some time – the introduction in May this year of the new gambling law originally announced in 2007. Spain’s regulatory structure has been bifurcated for decades.


There has been a national legal framework for gambling in place since 1977, and that has continued to remain in force, but the bulk of regulatory decision-making has been devolved to the autonomous communities since 1985. The 1977 framework did not, of course, envisage the arrival of online gaming, and that has led to some anomalous situations – for example, the autonomous community of Madrid went ahead with legalising Internet gambling before the national government, ironically based in the same city, had done so. The new rules should bring some clarity to this situation and


the first online gaming operations authorised under them could be up and running by the end of the year. A new supervisory body, the Comisión Nacional del Juego (National Gaming Commission), is being created with nationwide oversight of licensing. A further new body, the Consejo de Políticas de Juego


(Gaming Policies Board), will advise on regulatory and enforcement policy, and include representatives from the regions. Taxation for the majority of games has been set at 25 percent of gross gaming revenue, after the government – following


protests from the likes of the Remote Gambling Association – did a U-turn on earlier plans to levy taxes as a percentage of total stakes.


This page was sponsored by:


SPAIN MARKET REPORT


SEPTEMBER 2011


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