DGOJ: Spain gambling ad-spend has returned to pre-Decree levels 

DGOJ, Spain’s Directorate General of Gambling (DGOJ), has underscored that online gambling continues to grow its marketing exposure, irrespective of federal restrictions.

The observation led the Directorate’s observation of “State Online Market Report for 2024,” monitoring the activities of licensed operators.

In 2024,  Spain’s  online gambling market generated gross gaming revenues (GGR) of €1.45bn, up 17% on FY2023 comparatives of €1.25bn.

A breakdown of segments showed online sports betting achieved the highest growth rate of 24%, generating a GGR contribution of €609m (FY2023: €492m). 

The report cited that “growth is driven by conventional matched-odds sports betting, which increased by 23.69% last year, and live betting by 24.05%.”

Online Casino maintains its status as the largest GGR segment, generating a revenue contribution of €731m (FY2023: €625m). The segment’s growth primarily reflects increased revenues generated by online slots at €472m (FY2023: €385m).

Apart from ‘Ruleta en Vivo’ (live roulette), which generated revenue of €208m, all other casino segments remained flat on a year-on-year basis.

DGOJ summarised: “Since reporting on individual online gambling segments in 2015, this has led to increasingly higher market shares for online casinos compared to other disciplines.

“In 2024, they accounted for 64.62% of the casino market and had an annual growth rate of 22.80%. Compared to the previous year, live roulette increased by 10.41% and blackjack by 3.80%. In contrast, conventional roulette has decreased by -8.46% this year.”

As Spain’s online gambling market continues to grow year on year, the report showed a rebound in Spanish gambling’s advertising and marketing spend.

+ €500m on Marketing & Advertising Spend

The report stated that gambling advertising and marketing in Spain peaked at €525m in 2024 (FY2023: €466m). The breakdown of expenditure includes €261m on bonuses, €203m on advertising, €56.3m on affiliates, and €5.4m on sponsorship.

Of relevance, expenditure on advertising returned to the level of €200m from its low point of €135m in 2022 after the implementation of the Royal Decree on Advertising, which prohibited betting sponsorship on Spanish sports and set new broadcasting windows for gambling adverts between 1am and 5am.

The market report shows that sponsorship spending declined from €26.8m in 2020 to €3.1m in 2022 but returned to €5.4m in 2024. Affiliate expenditure tracks a steady increase to €56.3m in 2024, which is a 46% increase from 2020.

In 2024, the Supreme Court agreed with an appeal by the industry association Jdigital and overturned a provision of the Royal Decree that had been introduced to prevent the promotion of gambling adverts on online platforms.

Clock ticking on technical duties

Spain’s autonomous communities await the DGOJ and federal government to settle on the technical remit of gambling regulations to come into force after Parliament passed the “Royal Decree on Responsible Gaming Environments” as part of the ongoing update of the legislation.

The new legislation is intended to make Spain the safest jurisdiction in Europe in terms of supervising gambling operations and market participation by the end of 2024. The plan includes the creation of a single registry of gamblers and the compulsory verification of the ‘risk profiles’ of persons under the age of 25.

However, scrutiny continues to mount on the DGOJ mandate as there is increasing doubt regarding the ability to fulfil the technical requirements of the Decree. Spanish regulators face the challenge of enforcing very strict measures on gambling and communication with customers.