How is the online bingo market doing in Spain?

How is the online bingo market doing in Spain?

People in Spain have many things that they just love doing. There’s football, of course, as they follow the latest results of Barcelona and Real Madrid. Tennis is popular, too, especially with fans of local hero Rafael Nadal, but the past few years have shown that Spaniards also love playing online bingo.

Revenues Increasing

The lure of big prizes being paid for one line, two lines or a full house has seen the amount of real cash being spent on online bingo steadily increasing. A recent report published by the Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ) regulatory body shows a big rise in online bingo revenues.

In 2018, online bingo spending rose 18% to €13 million. This maintains the upward trend that began in 2016. The growth of online bingo joins that of other casino games and particularly sports betting.

The online bingo industry is a massive business now, and such is the growth in the desire to get a full house, bingo has become the second most popular game to play online. New customers are flocking to online bingo sites.

The Search for New Customers

As the industry sees more and more sites opening, the quest to find new customers is an important one. Bingo sites will offer potential customers plenty of welcome offers and promotions.

Most of these require them to sign-up with the site, but in order to receive a welcome offer, they need to put some money in their account first. No deposit bingo bonuses, very popular in other markets, are not being offered by Spanish bingo sites right now but there are other promotions to enjoy.

Good End to 2018

Looking further at the revenue figures for online bingo in 2018, the final quarter saw revenue increase by 12% year-on-year to €3.5m in Q4 It’s not surprising therefore that the online bingo market in Spain has been described as an “exciting high-growth regulated market” that offers a “strong multi-channel potential.

It is noticeable that the amount of money that is being spent on overall marketing across all verticals greatly increased from €222m to €329m last year. It seems that the messages the marketing bosses are sending out are being successful and producing increased amounts of expenditure, particularly when it comes to online bingo.

Bingo Traditions

It’s not a surprise that online bingo has proved so successful in Spain. Traditionally there has been a large number of bingo players in the country.  For decades players have been flocking to their local bingo halls for an enjoyable evening with their friends and hopefully some big wins. Such was its popularity of the game that the Spanish government had to regulate how close bingo halls could be to each other.

New Gambling Laws

 It was inevitable therefore that when the gambling laws were changed in 2012, that bingo fans would add playing online to their desires of playing bingo. Another reason that online bingo grew in popularity was because of the smoking ban in bingo halls. Players realized that they could play online and smoke as much as they wanted to.

Legality

That’s despite previous problems over the legality of playing online bingo. Back in 2012, the Spanish government passed laws that only allowed online gambling to be run by companies with a Spanish-government-issued licence and an .es domain. This greatly affected British ex-pats who have been playing bingo on international sites and chatting away to their friends in chatrooms.

The ex-pats and UK tourists had more problems last year, but ones that wouldn’t have happened if they had been playing online. In Benidorm last year UK tourists had their games in a pub ended and prize money seized and were accused of illegal gambling activities.

All Ages Playing Bingo

Now those problems are in the past and players in Spain just can’t get enough of playing 75 or 90-ball bingo games. The long-standing image of bingo being played by old people (mainly female) or people at the seaside dodging the showers has long been ruled out.

Bingo is attracting players of all ages these days and there’s an active and generous community. The lure of winning massive prizes and a steady stream of games throughout the day is attracting more and more players, and the recent figures prove that.