The Spanish General Directorate of Gambling Affairs (“DGOJ”) has recently published new data on the development of the Spanish gambling market for 2020.

In particular, during the last days the DGOJ has published on its website the Annual Activity Report for 2020 (link in Spanish here), as well as the Annual Report on Gambling Activities (link in Spanish available here).

According to the data published by the DGOJ, live roulette, poker tournaments and bingo are the games which grew more significantly during 2020, while the participation in roulette and sports betting has decreased during this period. The games with the highest share in the Gross Gaming Revenue (“GGR”) during 2020 were fixed-odds betting (41.8%), slot machines (23.1%), roulette (15.3%) and poker (13%). Finally, the DGOJ notes that during 2020 the GGR of the online gambling activities in Spain maintains a growth of 13.7% compared to 2019, and that despite the special circumstances of 2020, it has reached € 851 million.

The DGOJ’s Annual Activity Report highlights the activities carried out by the regulatory body during the last year. In respect of new license applications, while the market is currently closed for new general licenses, during 2020 up to 22 new singular license applications were filed, out of which 17 have been granted.

During the last year several actions have been undertaken to review the activity offered by online gambling operators on its platforms. In particular, 41 gambling platforms of new operators have been reviewed by the DGOJ. This supervision activity has been complemented by 109 complaints received from licensed operators, which mainly dealt with subjective prohibitions, account blocking and quota changes. Moreover, 240 disciplinary resolutions have been issued in 2020, amounting the total amount of € 55,839,370, of which 11 included disqualification for offering online gambling activities for a 2 years term. Furthermore, 32 sanctioning procedures have been launched in 2020 against illegal operators in Spain.

The report also shows that the DGOJ has received more claims than in the previous year (total amount 215, most of them referred to sport betting and the majority referred to the suspension or blocking of users’ accounts).

In respect of the online gambling administrative fee, the total amount collected by the Spanish authorities during the 2020 financial year was €21,9 million.

The Annual Report on Gambling Activities contains the data reported both by online and land based operators in Spain, and thus shows the impact that each of the licensed activities have on the Spanish regulated market. The structure of this report permits to segregate the data depending on the type of game, region and year, being a very useful tool to understand the data of the market between 2016 and 2020.