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Portugal – Santa Casa de Misericordia to offer online gaming

By - 9 January 2017

According to reports from Portugal, state-run charity Santa Casa de Misericordia de Lisboa (SCML) will enter the online market in Portugal very soon and has created a consortium specifically to explore online gaming called the Social Betting Society.

The new consortium is made up of SCML as we all as number of other charities. Deputy Supplier and Executive Director of SCML Edmundo Martinho told local news portal Jornal de Negocios that the charity will apply for an online licence from the gaming authority.

The charity will offer sports betting, pari-mutuel betting and other games of chance and could later expand its offer to include a wide variety of online games. He also said said that the offer of online gaming would in no way negatively affect its core business.

“The games that are to be made available will have different nature and models, so that the belief is is that there will be no negative impact on the revenues made by the other games operated by Santa Casa through its Gaming Department,” he told Jornal de Negocios
Gross revenues from casinos, bingo halls and games operated by SCML increased in the first quarter of 2016 by 32 per cent compared to the same period the previous year. In total, the Portuguese spent €762.5m – €183m more than in the first three months of 2015.

Last January sales for games run by the charity increased by as much as 44 per cent compared with the same month in 2015 standing at €243m. The strong performance was influenced by a new sports fixed-odds sports betting product Placard, which was launched in September 2015 and which accounted for 13 per cent of revenue in the first quarter of this year. Around 12 per cent of this figure was achieved with the new sports betting game. The lottery predicts that the game will generate yearly sales of around €250m.

In 2012 it was revealed that a government committee was looking into legalising online gambling in order to raise cash for state pension funds and to aid debt-ridden soccer clubs. Under previous rules only SCML could offer sports betting and lotteries. Betclic was the first company to be issued a licence after new laws were passed in 2015 which gave the green light to online gaming companies.

Portugal’s government is hoping that opening the country up as a new online gaming market will attract enough national and international operators to raise an extra €25m in tax revenue.

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