Portugal casino market shows signs of recovery in 2015

Despite the €288.6m (US$ 314m) in revenue registered last year, the industry is still far away from its best performance in 2008 having reached a peak of €381m (US$ 415m).

The ACP has released its latest results for the whole of 2015, and it would appear that Portugal’s casino market has finally returned to positive territory. The growth rate includes a 12.4% improvement in table game revenues, and a 7.2% increase for slot machines.

Currently there are 11 casinos operating throughout the european country, which in 2015 were leaded by casino operator Estoril-Sol in terms of revenue, collecting a total of€182.3m. In second place is Lisboa Casino with €78.9m in revenue, followed by Estoril casino with €61.5m and the Povoa de Varzim with €41.9m.

Solverde group, which operates other five casinos also reported an 8.4% increase in revenues to €78m year-on-year and the Troi casino was up by 37.5%to €4.4m. Although the Amorim Turism’s Figueira de Fox casino saw its revenues remain largely flat at €14.9m; with the Pestana group’s Cadino da Madeira reporting a slight slump with revenues falling to €8.6m.

Land-based casinos in Portugal were not the only ones experiencing a return to positive territory last year, and the French market, too, saw its revenues improve by 2.2pc to €2.2 bn in the same period, marking its first return to growth since the global financial crisis. This is all good news for local governments across France, which rely on casino gaming taxes for 30pc of their budgets.

Following the global economic downturn started in 2008, Portugal’s brick-and-mortar casino market has experienced a dramatic crisis. Since then the country had experienced a massive 37% contraction of its casino market in terms of revenue and this is only the first stage in the process of reduce this significant decline.