Kaizen Gaming is preparing to launch its Betano sportsbook in Spain, having secured a Spanish gambling licence and opened a search for a Managing Director to run the market from an office in Ceuta.
The Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ) updated its licence registry on 14 July to list Kaizen Gaming XYZ PLC, following the regulator’s approval of a corporate re-registration that transferred an existing online gambling licence from Kambi Sportsbook PLC. The transfer hands Kaizen a general betting licence, authorisations covering fixed-odds sports betting and other counterpart betting products, and permission to run gambling advertising in Spain. Buying an incumbent licence lets the group skip the wait for a new DGOJ tender, which the regulator opens only periodically.
Spain will be Kaizen’s 11th active European market and the next addition to a footprint that already covers 20 regulated jurisdictions across Europe, Africa and the Americas. The company, which operates Betano internationally and the Stoiximan brand in its home markets of Greece and Cyprus, runs Betano in Portugal, Romania, Czechia, Bulgaria, Germany, Denmark, Belgium and the UK.
Why Ceuta
The choice of Ceuta is a tax decision. The Spanish autonomous city, on the North African coast, applies a 50% cut to the national gambling tax, lowering the rate on gross gaming revenue (GGR) from 20% to 10% for operators with genuine local substance there. The same 50% reduction applies to corporate tax, taking it from 25% to 12.5%, alongside VAT relief and lower social security contributions.
Those incentives have pulled a run of Spanish-licensed operators to Ceuta and its sister city Melilla over recent years, turning Ceuta into the market’s established online gambling base. The catch is that the discount depends on demonstrating real management presence and decision-making in the city rather than a nameplate address, which is why Kaizen’s Ceuta hire carries board-level duties.
The job listing for the Managing Director, Spain role sets out a mandate that goes beyond commercial launch. The MD will own the Spanish profit and loss, sit as an appointed board member of the Spanish entity, and anchor the company’s corporate substance in Ceuta by running an on-site team across marketing, compliance, operations and customer support. That framing shows Kaizen is building the Ceuta operation to satisfy the substance test that keeps the tax rate low, not just to plant a flag.
A crowded market
Betano enters a regulated market that has kept growing without a marquee sporting event to lift it. Spanish online gambling GGR reached roughly €1.45 billion in 2024, up about 17.6% on the prior year, with online casino, led by slots, the largest vertical ahead of sports betting. Quarterly figures show the trend holding, with online GGR of around €405 million in Q3 2025 as casino continued to outgrow betting.
The competitive field is dense. On the sportsbook side, Betano will line up against international operators including bet365, Flutter Entertainment’s Betfair, Entain’s Bwin, 888 and Betsson, plus Spanish operators Codere, Luckia and Sportium that combine online brands with large retail estates. Traffic rankings underline how contested the top of the market is: as of June 2026, bet365.es led on visits, followed closely by Sportium and Winamax, with Codere and Luckia further back, according to SEMrush data.
Several of those rivals are managing their own pressures. Codere Online’s parent has been through restructuring, and the wider Codere group put itself up for sale at a valuation above €2 billion, a sign of how capital-intensive holding position in Spain and Latin America has become. Betsson, meanwhile, has opened a technology hub in Málaga while presenting it as an engineering function rather than a commercial push into Spanish betting.
The Betano playbook
Kaizen’s history in newer markets points to how the Spanish launch is likely to look. The group leans on football sponsorship to buy visibility quickly. In the UK, Betano entered the regulated market in 2024 through a platform arrangement with BV Group, the operator formerly known as BetVictor, then raised its profile with a principal shirt sponsorship of Aston Villa that it extended in July 2026. Similar deals have supported its rollouts elsewhere in Europe.
The clearest template is Portugal, where Betano has grown into one of the country’s leading online sportsbooks and competes with Betclic for the top spot. Portuguese online gambling GGR reached €1.21 billion in 2025, and Betano’s share of that market is the kind of position Kaizen will want to build in Spain, a larger economy next door with a comparable football culture to target through sponsorship.
Kaizen has not confirmed a launch date, and the Betano.es domain sits behind licensing and hiring that are still in progress. The pace now depends on how fast the group can staff the Ceuta office, appoint its Managing Director and clear the technical work to go live. Whether Betano can repeat its Portuguese trajectory in a market where bet365 and the Spanish retail brands are already entrenched will be the test once the sportsbook opens.
Source: Kaizen Gaming
