European shared liquidity results in 2018

The financial results of the 2018 exercise of the Spanish and French online gambling market were presented by DGOJ (Spanish gambling regulator) and ARJEL (French gambling regulator) and respectively. Today we share the results and share of thoughts about the European shared liquidity market as a whole.

France: online poker growth 5% in 2018

An online poker industry was already developed in France when the shared liquidity agreement was signed (Winamax, the most popular French poker room has always ranked TOP-10 in terms of traffic); therefore, the results of online poker in France are not astonishing: the total profit reached €258M, a 5% growth compared to 2017. Comparing every quarter, the growth became less and less during the year.

Nevertheless, experts agree that the results are good because, before the beginning of the Europool, the online poker in France was in decline.

Key numbers of online poker in France (2018):

€4,154 billion were placed in bets places in cash games tables (€3,601 billion in 2017);
€2,267 billion invested in tournament buy-ins, of which €577 million were placed in the 4th quarter;
256,000 active players during the last week of 2018, 15,000 more than in 2017. Coastal provinces such as Réunion, Martinique, and Savoy had the highest traffic increase, over 12% more players compared to 2017.

Spain: the most profitable year in the history of regulated online poker

After 5 years decreasing, 2018 broke records on the online poker market in Spain. From the 3rd quarter of the year, it was already better than all 2017, and at the end of the year, the profit record established in 2013 was broken. The profits in Spain from the online poker industry were €82M

During 2018 the profits grew no less than 24% each quarter and the overall growth went up 37%. Tournaments growth 44% and cash games 26%, but in the last two quarters of the year, both disciplines had similar results and filled the gap of the first part of the year.

Conclusion

Spain and France are the backbones of the Europoker pool. 2018 came with very good news for Spain after 5 years of seeing a decreasing in the industry, and facts like PokerStars.es accepting abroad players opened the market again and made it attractive to local players. In the following months, Aconcagua Poker will join the Spain market and for sure this will drive more profits.

France depends on the joining of other countries like Italy to the shared liquidity to boost their results; although 2018 ended with green numbers, the growth is not very high, which is easily explained by the status of the industry in the country.