The Polish market remains dominated by casinos (US$1.3bn, +13%) and lottery operations (US$1.25bn, +1.4%), but sports betting stole the show, posting annual turnover of US$924 million, a year-on-year improvement of 105%, which pushed betting’s share of the overall market from 15.7% in 2016 to 26.4% in 2017.
The betting boom was spurred in part by a 29% rise in the number of retail betting outlets, but Poland’s newly regulated online betting market was the vertical’s prime mover.
Polish legislators approved new online sports betting rules in late-2016, and the regulated market officially began life on 1 April 2017, prompting a flurry of market exits and the birth of a new blacklist of operators who failed to make an appropriately swift run for the border.
Last month, Poland’s government estimated that locally licensed operators’ share of the online betting market had risen to 40% by the end of 2017, up from a mere 10% prior to the imposition of the new regime. The government hopes rigorous enforcement of its domain and payment blocking tools will eventually push the domestic online share to 90%.
Source: GMB / Calvin Ayre
