Key Points
- The gross gaming revenue from the Portuguese online gambling market has reached its highest level ever at €651.9m during H1 2026 as a result of 14.4% growth in Q2 2026 owing to football betting owing to the World Cup.
- Despite the successful operation of the regulated market, some 40% of gamblers in Portugal access gambling services via illegal sites, while for people aged 18 to 34 years old, this proportion rises to more than 50%.
- SRIJ issued 95 closure notices and sought 113 website blocks in Q2 alone, as the government prepares new legislation specifically targeting unlicensed gambling this summer.
Portugal’s Online Gambling Revenue Just Hit a Record: So Why Is the Regulator Still Worried?
Portugal’s regulated online gambling industry brought an all-time-high €651.9 million worth of gross gaming revenues in the first six months of 2026, registering a growth of 14% compared to the same period of time last year. Such numbers are sure to impress any regulator. Not Portugal’s one though.
The figures reported by the SRIJ for the second quarter reveal €328.2 million as earnings from April to June, growing by 14.4% year-on-year and 1.4% compared to the previous quarter. To put things into perspective, sports betting gross revenues accounted for just €109.2 million in Q2 2025; this quarter’s performance has been far better than that. Gross revenues from the games of chance (online casino games) were estimated at €203.1 million (61.9%), while fixed-odds sports betting accounted for €125.1 million (38.1%). IEJO tax collection amounted to €92.1 million, growing by 13.4% YOY.
The problem is not what the numbers show, it is what they miss entirely.
The World Cup Arrived at Exactly the Right Moment
Three weeks of football can move an entire quarter’s numbers. The FIFA World Cup kicked off on 11 June 2026, landing squarely inside Q2, and its fingerprints are all over the sports betting data. Football accounted for 69.9% of all sports betting stakes during the quarter. The World Cup alone drove 28.3% of all football betting volume, remarkable, given the tournament only ran for the final three weeks of the period.
Total sports betting stakes reached €515.6 million, up 12.7% year on year. Tennis took a 20.5% share of stakes; basketball followed at 6%. Sports betting gross revenue hit €125.1 million, up 14.6% from the same quarter of 2025, and up 4.7% from Q1 2026, showing the World Cup lifted sequential performance too.
Casino products, though, are where the real money sits. Machine games, slots overwhelmingly, accounted for 81.6% of all online casino stakes. Total games of chance stakes reached €5.69 billion across the quarter, up 13% year on year. Whatever excitement the World Cup generated in sports betting, slots remain Portugal’s dominant gambling product by a wide margin.
The Age Group Fuelling Growth Is Also the Age Group Most Likely to Bet Illegally
Portugal had 4.91 million registered player accounts by the end of June, up just 1% year on year, a sign of a market moving out of rapid expansion and settling into steadier growth. Active participation is rising faster: around 1.21 million accounts placed at least one bet during the quarter, 8.4% more than a year earlier.
The age distribution gives an interesting story. According to April 2026 customer profile data provided by the iGaming analytics company Blask, 21% of current users are 18 to 24 years old, while 34% are 25 to 34 years old, which means that 55% of the target audience is younger than 35 years old. According to the age distribution of SRIJ’s registered players, 54.3% of accounts are owned by individuals below 35 years old. As for new registrations, their age distribution is even younger: 36.2% of accounts were created by 18- to 24-year-old individuals.
Here is where things get genuinely uncomfortable. A 2024 study by the Portuguese Online Betting and Gambling Association (APAJO found that 41% of online gamblers in Portugal used unlicensed platforms). Among those aged 18 to 34, the share of unlicensed platform users climbs to 52.1%, more than half. The youngest demographic powering the legal market’s growth is also the demographic most likely to be gambling outside it.
Ricardo Domingues, president of APAJO, put a number on the ambition: “I would say never less than 80 per cent of users” gambling exclusively through the legal market. He added: “If legislation, rules and regulations allow licensed products to evolve to meet consumer expectations, we will channel more players into the regulated market.”
The gap between that 80% target and the current reality is not small.
What Keeps Pulling Players Towards Illegal Sites?
The APAJO study identified three reasons players prefer unlicensed platforms: higher bonuses, better odds, and more games to choose from. Only 37.7% of those using illegal sites admitted they knew they were doing so. A significant share of gamblers on unlicensed platforms may genuinely not know, or may not care, that they are outside the regulated system.
Minister for Economy of Portugal, Manuel Castro Almeida, referred to illegal gambling as “a plague” at the launch of a public awareness campaign in June 2026. New laws for modernisation and improvement of gambling regulations along with penalties for unlicensed operators will be passed by summer 2026, Mr Almeida stated. “Not Everything You See Is Safe Gambling” is the campaign slogan. It is rather direct; it has to be.
Portugal is not alone in this. The European Casino Association’s November 2025 report estimated that illegal operators generated €80.6 billion across the EU in 2024, roughly 71% of the bloc’s total online gambling market. Unlicensed operators outcompeting on product and price is a continent-wide problem; Portugal just happens to have better data on it than most.
SRIJ’s Q2 Enforcement Push, and the Gap It Cannot Close Alone
SRIJ issued 95 closure notices to illegal operators in Q2 and requested the blocking of 113 websites. Since Portugal’s online gambling framework came into force in 2015, the regulator has now issued 1,834 closure notices and sought 3,043 website blocks in total.
The area where SRIJ took a step forward was player protection, which was something that was long overdue. In April 2026, the authority introduced a centralised system for self-exclusion requests, which replaced the earlier system where there was a need to make individual requests for each operator. In the older system, a player excluded himself from one operator but then just signed up with another operator. In total, by the end of June, 413,700 players were marked as self-excluded; 60,900 players made self-exclusions in Q2.
The fix works within the licensed ecosystem. It does nothing to stop a self-excluded player from turning to an unlicensed site instead, and that gap is exactly what the forthcoming legislation is meant to address.
As of 30 June, 17 authorised operators held 30 licences covering sports betting, online casino games, and bingo. The market has since expanded: by the end of July, 19 authorised brands were active, with Retabet and Vincino entering the regulated market that month.
What the Legislation Needs to Do, and What Happens If It Doesn’t?
Portugal’s parliament passed Resolution No. 161/2025 directing the government to protect consumers, combat illegal gambling, and modernise the online gambling framework. The summer bill is the government’s first real opportunity to act on that with binding rules.
Licensed operators are constrained by rules that unlicensed platforms simply ignore, on bonuses, odds formats, and game variety. If the new legislation only adds enforcement muscle without giving licensed operators more room to compete on product, the channelisation gap will not close. Players who are choosing better offers will keep choosing them, legal or not.
A record H1 and a 41% illegal-use rate existing at the same time is not a contradiction. It is proof that the regulated market and the unlicensed market are growing side by side, and the distance between them is what Portugal’s government now has to close.
Expert Analysis
Portugal’s regulated market is producing record revenue, and SRIJ’s enforcement activity is running at pace. Neither changes the underlying problem: nearly half of 18- to 34-year-olds are gambling illegally, drawn by better bonuses, better odds, and more game options; structural advantages that enforcement cannot neutralise. The summer 2026 legislation is the government’s clearest opportunity to close those gaps on the product side. Without that, blocking websites remains a rearguard action against a market already several moves ahead.
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