Portugal is quickly issuing online gaming licensing as of late, with a seventh operator now in the mix. Figueira Company Praia has been awarded the seventh iGaming license issued by Serviço de Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos, the southern European country’s gaming regulator.
The company will offer sports betting services with the Casinoportugal.pt website.
This may be the seventh license issued for online gaming but only the third for fixed-odds sports betting in the country. Only Bet.pt and Betclic currently have sports betting licensing in Portugal. Currently, sports betting in the country has a tax at 8% to 16% of turnover. Two years ago, sports betting was included in a State Aid filing within the European Union by the Remote Gambling Association. This group felt that the European Union trade rules were being broken in the country due to the prohibitive betting tax.
Bet.pt and Betclic.pt are also licensed to offer online casino gaming in Portugal along with EstorilSolcasinos.pt and PokerStars.pt. For poker and casino gaming, taxes are set between 15 and 30 percent of the gross gaming revenues. This amount is capped once a company is able to see a yearly income of €10 million.
As far as poker is concerned, PokerStars remains the only operator with the dot.pt online poker licensing with the ability to offer Omaha and Hold’em variants for cash gaming plus tournament options. Betclic was the first company to be given online gaming licensing in May 2016 and five companies have now followed since for dot.pt market licensing.
When looking at May 2016 until March of this year, Portugal was able to generate $92.1 million in revenues within the ten month time frame in regards to online gaming.
