Portugal’s regulated online gambling market generated approximately €1.21bn in gross gaming revenue in 2025, an increase of roughly 8.5% on 2024’s €1.11bn total, based on quarterly data published by the Serviço de Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos (SRIJ). The full-year result consolidates a pattern visible across each quarter of the year: online growth held through a softer first half before accelerating in the final three months, while land-based channels contracted for a second consecutive year.
Quarterly Performance and the 2025 Full-Year Picture
Each of the four quarters delivered positive year-on-year growth, with Q4 2025 setting a new all-time record at €337.6m, 4.5% above Q4 2024 and 13.6% sequentially higher than Q3.
| Quarter | Online GGR | YoY Change | Sequential |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 2025 | €284.7m | +9.0% | -11.8% |
| Q2 2025 | €287.0m | +9.6% | +0.8% |
| Q3 2025 | €297.1m | +11.6% | +3.5% |
| Q4 2025 | €337.6m | +4.5% | +13.6% |
| FY 2025 | €1,206.4m | +8.5% | — |
Online casino remained the structural revenue driver. Across the four quarters, casino GGR exceeded €770m, supported by slot products that represented around 80% of all casino wagers in each period. Total online wagering approached €6.5bn in Q4 alone, with €5.9bn attributed to casino products. Sports betting contributed a more variable line. Q4 sports GGR of €123.6m was down 10.6% year-on-year but up 23.9% sequentially, pointing to a partial normalisation following a weak Q3 rather than a structural shift.
Football dominated sports wagering at 75.6% of total activity in Q4, with Portugal’s Primeira Liga leading competition betting at 11.4%, followed by the English Premier League and UEFA Champions League at 9.5% each.
The Special Online Gaming Tax (IEJO) collected €99.3m in Q4, up 11.3% year-on-year. First-half collections totalled approximately €163.9m, and full-year IEJO tracked closely with revenue expansion.
Land-Based Segment Continues to Decline
The retail picture moved in the opposite direction. Land-based casinos and gaming machine halls generated €69.8m in Q4, down 3.8% year-on-year and 3.5% from Q3. Q3 2025 retail GGR was €72.4m, down 4.6% year-on-year. For full-year 2025, land-based GGR fell 1.15%, confirming the channel’s structural underperformance relative to online.
Banked table games posted a 22.7% Q4 drop, while non-banked games fell 5.6%. Slot machines, which account for nearly 79% of retail GGR, posted a modest 2.3% increase, limiting further losses without offsetting the broader decline. Bingo generated €7.2m in Q4, up 3.9% quarter-on-quarter but down 2.3% year-on-year.
The channel split mirrors patterns across Southern Europe. Europe’s GGR reached €123.4bn in 2024, with online consistently outpacing retail across major jurisdictions. Spain’s online gambling market hit €405m in Q3 2025 amid a similar casino-led expansion.
Player Metrics and Rising Self-Exclusion
Registered player accounts reached nearly 4.93 million by end-Q4 2025, up 4.5% year-on-year. New registrations, however, fell 23.5% to 231,400 in Q4. That deceleration indicates the market is maturing rather than expanding its player base at prior rates.
Players under 45 represented over three-quarters of the user base. Among new registrants, the 18 to 24 age group accounted for 34.9% of sign-ups, the highest share of any cohort.
Self-excluded players reached 361,400 by end-Q4 2025, up 23.6% year-on-year and representing 7.3% of all registered accounts. In the land-based segment, casino self-exclusion requests rose 30.67% year-on-year to 196 in Q4. Full-year 2025 casino requests totalled 756, up 16.13% from 651 in 2024. The pace of self-exclusion growth now exceeds the pace of player account growth by a widening margin, a ratio Southern European regulators now treat as a structural indicator.
Enforcement and Regulatory Developments
SRIJ issued 58 closure notifications to unlicensed operators during Q4 and flagged 116 websites for ISP-level blocking. Since the regulatory framework launched in June 2015, cumulative totals have reached 1,633 closure notifications and 2,747 blocked sites. The challenge of unlicensed market enforcement is shared across the region, as shown in Italy’s digital firewall initiative against illegal online gambling.
Policy activity accelerated in late 2025. In September 2025, the Assembly of the Republic advanced to committee a consolidated bill proposing stricter restrictions on gambling advertising across broadcast, print and digital media. Separately, Turismo de Portugal and the SRIJ launched international tenders for the Espinho, Algarve and Póvoa de Varzim casino concessions, with evaluation weightings of 35% for the fixed annual consideration, 50% for the variable percentage of GGR offered, and 15% for the minimum guaranteed annual consideration.
From 8 April 2026, a new centralised self-exclusion portal came into effect, allowing players and authorised third parties to block access to all SRIJ-licensed online operators in a single action. The system replaces the previous operator-by-operator exclusion process.
Online Traffic: Licensed Operators and the Affiliate Layer
Traffic data drawn from SimilarWeb, Ahrefs and other web analytics platforms offers a view the SRIJ’s GGR reports cannot provide on their own. It shows where Portuguese users and traffic actually concentrate online, and reveals a clear split between two categories: SRIJ-licensed B2C operators, and affiliate or tipster sites operating outside the regulated perimeter.
| Domain | Total Visits | Mobile Share % | YoY % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| betano | 7.45M | 61.82% | ↓ 23.06% |
| betclic | 3.45M | 54.48% | ↓ 10.94% |
| solverde | 2.19M | 50.73% | ↑ 20.93% |
| casinoportugal | 1.03M | 39.20% | ↑ 18.75% |
| betclic.com | 760.9K | 98.73% | ↑ 20.83% |
| estorilsolcasinos | 531.79K | 69.09% | ↓ 22.16% |
| bacanaplay | 325.77K | 47.95% | ↑ 29.66% |
| academiadasapostas.com | 311.47K | 74.28% | ↑ 3.55% |
| betinasia.com | 263.28K | 98.98% | ↑ 261.46% |
| forebet.com | 246.7K | 83.52% | ↓ 5.91% |
| luckia | 222.34K | 91.82% | ↑ 69.21% |
| johnnybet.com | 182.06K | 99.19% | ↓ 33.39% |
| vitibet.com | 145K | 93.20% | ↑ 79.03% |
| pokerstars | 111.81K | 69.83% | ↓ 13.91% |
| 888 | 109.83K | 63.44% | ↑ 21.87% |
Licensed B2C Operators
Kaizen Gaming’s Betano sits well ahead of the field at 7.45m monthly visits, with 61.82% mobile share. The 23.06% year-on-year decline is material given the operator’s scale and its sponsorship presence tied to Primeira Liga football. Betclic Portugal follows at 3.45m visits with a 10.94% contraction. Estoril Sol Casinos, the retail-linked brand, fell 22.16% to 531,790 visits.
Growth came from the next tier. Solverde.pt added 20.93% year-on-year to 2.19m visits. Casino Portugal (casinoportugal.pt), operated by Estoril Sol Digital, grew 18.75% to 1.03m. Bacana Play grew 29.66% to 325,770, and Luckia posted the strongest expansion among licensed brands at 69.21% to 222,340 visits. 888 rose 21.87% to 109,830, while PokerStars declined 13.91% to 111,810, continuing a longer-term pattern of poker traffic compression seen across regulated EU markets.
The betclic.com international domain captured a further 760,900 visits with a 98.73% mobile share and 20.83% growth. That domain is not the SRIJ-licensed Portuguese property (betclic.pt), but its Portuguese-language exposure and diaspora traffic register distinctly in the rankings.
The licensed cluster shows market share redistribution rather than a broad contraction. Betano and Betclic’s larger declines are absorbed by growth at Solverde, Casino Portugal, Bacana Play, Luckia and 888. The overall licensed top-tier remains dominant in visits, consistent with SRIJ’s aggregate GGR data.
Affiliates and Tipster Sites
A separate cluster of domains operates adjacent to the regulated market. These sites do not accept wagers and are not licensed by SRIJ. They compete directly for the search traffic that licensed operators rely on for acquisition.
Academia das Apostas (academiadasapostas.com), a Portuguese-language sports betting news and tipster platform, reached 311,470 visits with modest 3.55% year-on-year growth. Forebet.com, a football prediction site, declined 5.91% to 246,700. Johnnybet.com, an affiliate and bookmaker review platform, fell 33.39% to 182,060.
Two outliers stand out in this cluster. Betinasia.com grew 261.46% year-on-year to 263,280 visits, with 98.98% mobile share. The site offers tipping content oriented toward Asian bookmaker odds, a category that typically signals users looking for non-licensed alternatives. Vitibet.com grew 79.03% to 145,000 visits with 93.20% mobile share, serving football prediction data and statistics.
The divergence is relevant for operator marketing teams. Licensed brands are contracting on several of the largest individual domains while affiliate traffic is expanding in parts of the ecosystem that funnel toward bookmaker comparisons, tipster communities, and in some cases unlicensed operator links. SRIJ’s ISP-blocking programme targets unlicensed operators themselves. Affiliate and prediction sites that do not host wagering are not subject to the same enforcement toolkit.
What to Watch Through 2026
Portugal heading into 2026 presents a clearer channel and demand structure than at any point since the RJO framework launched in 2015. Online GGR crossed €1.2bn. Land-based revenue continued its slow retreat. The ratio of self-exclusion growth to new account growth has widened to the point where it functions as a structural indicator rather than a quarterly anomaly. The centralised self-exclusion portal closes one of the more visible gaps in the player-protection architecture.
The open question for SRIJ is whether its enforcement reach extends beyond operator blocking into the affiliate and tipster layer, where traffic data shows a growing share of player acquisition journeys now begins. The next quarterly report, covering Q1 2026, will be the first test of how the new self-exclusion system affects account-level dynamics and whether the 2025 trajectory carries into the new year.
Source: Serviço de Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos (SRIJ)
