In the last quarter of 2023, football was the favorite sport of bettors (74.7%), surpassing basketball (10.8%) and tennis (9.7%).
According to ECO, Sports betting on the Internet generated a record 532.1 million euros in the last quarter of 2023, making that year the pinnacle of these records, according to the Gaming Regulation and Inspection Service of Tourism of Portugal.
The sector recorded a total turnover of 1,721 million euros in 2023, after the last three months of the year were the busiest, surpassing the previous quarterly maximum seen in the same period of 2022 (458.7 million).
Online sports betting increased by 16% compared to the previous year (1,481 million euros), which had been a slowdown after exponential growth in 2021 (1,402 million), compared to 808 million in 2020, 543 million in 2019 and 392 million in 2018.
The year 2023 continued the upward trend in recent months, after the third (390.5 million euros) and the second (357.6 million) slightly below the first quarter (441.4 million).
In the last five years, this sector represented almost six billion euros in turnover, equivalent to the profit from tourist accommodation throughout the entire year 2023.
This amount corresponds, in the same period, to 896.6 million euros of gross revenue – the difference between the total amount of bets and the value awarded in prizes.
Once again, 2023 was the most profitable year with 324.4 million euros, and in this chapter, the first quarter was the most profitable, with gross revenue reaching 85.7 million – in the fourth quarter it was 72.8 million.
According to reports from the Gaming Regulation and Inspection Service of Tourism of Portugal, gross revenue from sports betting was 107.5 million euros in 2019, 161.9 million in 2020, 251.1 million in 2021, and 297.2 million in 2022.
Still, in relation to the last quarter of last year, football was the preferred modality of bettors, with 74.7%, surpassing, once again, basketball (10.8%) and tennis (9.7%), while the others were target of 4.8% bets.
The Champions League was the competition with the most bets on football in the last three months of 2023 (10.2%), slightly above the English League (10.1%) and the Portuguese I League (9.9%).