Portugal’s Gambling Regulator Issues Sports Betting Licence

Portugal’s gambling regulator grants the thirteenth licence to a sports betting operator.

The countries gambling regulator Serviço Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos do Turismo de Portugal (SRIJ), announced that it has issued an online sports betting licence to SAS Social Betting, Gaming and Gambling Online, SA.

The gambling regulator body’s licence will grant SAS’s Placard.pt domain to operate online sport bettings. Placard.pt being the offline brand of Santa Casa da Misericordia de Lisboa (SCML), a state lottery monopoly which made public its intentions to apply for a licence a couple of years back.

The launch comes a few days before the 2018 FIFA World Cup starts in Russia, and SCML expects a big volume of customers after the competition ends.

The online gambling market has achieved a year-on-year boost in the Portuguese market, which completed its first year of legal operations in 2017. The first three months of 2018 saw online gambling operators generate €33.8 million, which is €2.5 million higher than the same period in 2017. However, the number is €2.7 million lower than the previous quarter (17Q4).

Online sportsbooks finished the first quarter with flat results, as they generated €17.4 million, but approximately €3m less than the fourth quarter of 2017. The most popular sport continues to be football, as it accounted for over three-quarters of the total betting turnover, followed by basketball and tennis, with 10.6 per cent and 9.6 per cent of the market respectively.

Source: FocusGamingNews