According to an official source from the Secretary of State for Youth and Sports, contacted by Lusa, this increase in bets in Portugal reflects “a post-pandemic trend on a global scale.”
Still without data for the fourth quarter of 2022, previous reports indicated 1,023 ME in this year's betting volume 369.4 ME in the first quarter, 305.5 ME in the second and 348.2 ME in the third.
The Covid-19 pandemic also affected the online sports betting sector, visible in the drop from 149.2 ME invested in the first quarter to 90.7 ME in the second, when practically all sports competitions were suspended.
There followed a period of recovery and an increase in turnover to around 300 ME per quarter, a bar that was largely overcome in the best quarter of activity, the first of 2021, when online sports betting moved 423.8 ME.
In the years 2018 and 2019, although significant, the amounts involved in the bets were more modest, with 391.8 ME in the first of the aforementioned years and 543.2 ME in the second, much because of the 185.7 ME in the last months of 2019.
This sector had an exponential increase in 2021, when it recorded a betting volume of around 1,402 million euros (ME), compared to 808 ME in 2020, 543 ME in 2019 and 392 ME in 2018.
The total number of sports bets placed between 2018 and 2022, even without the fourth quarter report, amounts to 4,169 ME, which corresponds, in the same period, to 811.1 ME in gross revenue, the difference between the total amount of bets and the value awarded in prizes.
Once again, 2021 was the most profitable year with 251.1 ME, with the best quarter of the period under review being the first three months of 2022, when gross revenue amounted to 77.7 ME.
According to reports from Portugal’s Gaming Regulation and Inspection Service of Tourism, gross revenue from sports betting was 78.9 ME in 2018, 107.5 ME in 2019 and 161.9 ME in 2020, below 2021 and also from last year, which, in the first nine months, had already secured a gross revenue of 211.7 ME.
Source: Lusa
