Reports
MARKET REPORT: PORTUGAL
Essential information and facts about Portugal:
Country Portugal Capital
Lisbon
Population Median age
Total Area 92,090
sq.km 10,839,514 42.2 years
Religion Roman Catholic (80%), other Christian (3.3%)
Languages Portuguese (official) Currency
Euro Government type Semi presidential republic
Chief of State President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (since 2016)
Head of Government Prime Minister Antonio Luis Santos de Costa (since 2015)
Cabinet Council of Ministers appointed by president on recommendation by Prime Minister
Elections President elected by majority vote for five year term. Prime Minister voted in after elections. Last held in 2015
Te online sector saw total revenues between September 2016 and September 2017 of €113.4m and total taxes of €41.6m for the same period. Te first nine months of 2017 saw total revenues of €86m although the second quarter of 2017 saw a considerable decrease in earnings
Pokerstars launched its poker website in late November 2016. In the beginning online poker was very popular with huge interest from local players. Te online poker room’s first days say weekly average of cash game players of 2,000. Tis has since dropped to around 55 cash game players on the PokerStars website and interest has worn off significantly.
In July 2017 France, Italy, Spain and Portugal signed an agreement for online poker liquidity sharing which will allow the country to merge its online poker player pool with those in the other participating countries.
Under the proposed amendments it is then hoped Portugal will be able to enter similar agreements for other online gambling activities such as other games of chance and sports betting.
Although many see this as a boost for poker figures in Portugal with a pan-European online poker market hopefully generating more cash action during peak hours and more valuable tournaments at weekends, some fear that French players will merely dominate the new market means online poker players for other
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jurisdictions will look elsewhere to play poker or just not bother joining at all.
Historically the French poker players have dominated the World Series of Poker compared to their three European neighbours and it is thought Spanish and Portugal players will suffer the most mainly because of their lower disposable incomes.
Te online sector saw total revenues between September 2016 and September 2017 of €113.4m and total taxes of €41.6m for the same period. Te first nine months of 2017 saw total revenues of €86m although the second quarter of 2017 saw a considerable decrease in earnings.
Of this amount sports betting is responsible for just over 65 per cent whilst football is the most popular (78 per cent of bets) followed by tennis (13.8 per cent) and basketball (6.6 per cent).
Games of chance represent the remainder with slots responsible for almost 42 per cent of bets followed by Poker with 22 per cent, French Roulette with 19 per cent and Blackjack with nine percent and tournament poker 7.5 per cent.
Tere are some 523,000 registered customers since the market was launched and some 60 per cent are between the ages of 25 and 44 years.
After legal online gambling was introduced the SRIJ sent notices to some 220 international operators to ‘cease and desist’ and issued some 146 domain blocking notifications to local ISPs plus has instigated several criminal proceedings against operators.
Tere has been some criticism over the tax regime for online gambling which has kept some operators away from entering this market. Te eight to 16 per cent tax on turnover for online sports betting makes the market unattractive for many operators and since online gaming began in Portugal only eight such licences have been issued.
Operators are now calling for a review of the igaming sector and say the government needs to rethink the industry tax rates. However the SRIJ says the online sector is scheduled to undergo a regulatory assessment two years after the online sector was launched - in May 2018 - and nothing will change beforehand.
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