Spanish gambling industry enduring stark coronavirus-induced decline

In Spain and aggregated gross gaming revenues for the first ten months of 2020 reportedly decreased by 50% year-on-year to approximately €4.3 billion ($5.2 billion) owing to the impacts of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

According to a Wednesday report from iGamingBusiness.com, the disappointing figure was revealed via a special study conducted by the local Cejuego trade group in partnership with the University Carlos III of Madrid amid a year in which every segment of the industry including online and land-based is experiencing comparative revenue declines.

Persistent problems:

The investigation reportedly also divulged that private gaming companies chalked up ten-month domestic revenues of about €2.4 billion ($2.9 billion) with the state-owned Sociedad Estatal Loterias y Apuestas del Estado (SELAE) and Organizacion Nacional de Ciegos Espanoles (ONCE) having recorded a further €1.9 billion ($2.3 billion) in receipts. The source detailed that these figures moreover followed a 2019 in which iGaming, lottery and land-based casinos had accounted for roughly 0.8% of Spain’s gross domestic product at roughly €9.4 billion ($11.5 billion) despite still attempting to come to terms with a lingering economic downturn.

iGaming triumph:

Alejandro Landaluce serves as the Chief Executive Officer for Madrid-headquartered Cejuegos and he reportedly pronounced that the study additionally showed that Spain’s online gaming industry had grown by about 17.7% year-on-year during the second quarter to offset simultaneous declines from sportsbetting triggered by the worldwide delay or cancellation of sporting events.

Landaluce reportedly proclaimed…

“Despite the fact that the drop in revenues from gaming is higher than has been recorded by other sectors such as fashion, automotive and retail, we have managed to reduce redundancies to 15% of the total workforce so that 85% of the sector’s employees are still working.”

Further findings:

Gambling Insider used its own subsequent report on the study to explain that the Spanish gaming industry paid approximately €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) in taxes during the ten-month period with around 84% of these going to the governments of the nation’s various autonomous communities. This source additionally cited the examination’s author, Jose Antonio Gomez Yanez, as proclaiming that only about 0.3% of the population had exhibited behaviors associated with problem gambling while a mere 17% of its ‘young people’ regularly gambled, which was below the European average of roughly 24%.

Reportedly read a statement from Yanez…

“Companies are making great efforts to maintain their workforces despite the declines in their income.”