Spain’s main regulated gambling activities generated €8.08bn in gross gaming revenue in 2025, with state lotteries and other reserved games accounting for €5.17bn of the total. But while lotteries remain the largest part of the market, the strongest growth is coming from online casino products, exposing a widening split between Spain’s expanding digital sector and a largely stagnant physical gambling industry.
Gross gaming revenue from Spain’s online market rose to €1.73bn in 2025, up 16.3 per cent from €1.49bn a year earlier. The amount wagered online climbed even faster, from €35.38bn to €41.08bn. Nationally licensed operators generated 98 per cent of online revenue, leaving gambling regulated by Spain’s autonomous communities with a marginal share of the digital market.
Online casino widens its lead
Casino and poker generated a combined €1.38bn across online and physical channels in 2025, compared with €1.22bn in 2024. Online activity accounted for 93 per cent of all money wagered in the regulated casino and poker market.
The land-based casino segment is holding its ground rather than driving the market forward. In 2025, Spain still had 49 licensed casinos, with table-game revenue rising from €182m to €189m, while machine revenue declined from €208m to €204m.
Advertising spending rebounds despite restrictions
The expansion coincided with a renewed marketing push following the Supreme Court’s 2024 annulment of parts of Spain’s advertising decree.
Spanish business newspaper Cinco Días reported that online gambling operators spent a record €244.1m on advertising in 2025, up 19.4 per cent from the previous year. The newspaper also reported that sponsorship spending rose by 140 per cent to €13m, while promotional expenditure, including bonuses, increased by 32 per cent to €347m.
Operators regained greater freedom to recruit, advertise online and use promotional offers, and the subsequent rise in accounts, stakes and revenue suggests that those channels remain highly effective despite the wider restrictions still in force.
Tax competition is shaping where growth lands
The online shift is also changing the economic geography of Spanish gambling. Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s two autonomous cities on the North African coast, offer operators a 10 per cent gross gaming revenue tax rate, compared with 20 per cent on the mainland. In Melilla, officials are trying to turn that tax advantage into jobs, investment and a broader digital economy.
“Our objective is not merely to attract companies that register an address in Melilla, but businesses that establish real operations, create employment, develop local talent and make the city part of their long-term growth strategy,” Jesús Martínez García, the autonomous city’s director of innovation, told SiGMA News.
He said the industry supports “around 500 direct jobs and approximately 1,000 indirect jobs” locally, while warning that tax alone cannot secure lasting investment.
“Tax savings alone are rarely enough for a company to choose a location and build a long-term presence there,” he said.
Spain’s 2025 numbers are consistent with Melilla’s argument that the expansion of online gambling could support a wider digital-services cluster. They also raise the stakes. As casino and betting activity moves further online, the regions able to capture compliance, technology, payments and customer-service operations will gain more of the industry’s economic value. Regions that depend more heavily on physical venues may therefore see slower growth than those capturing a larger share of the expanding online market.
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