Online is Austria’s fastest growing gambling vertical

The Austrian consulting firm Kreutzer, Fischer and Partner presented some interesting financial numbers during an interview with the publication Nachtrichten this week, showing that despite the monopolistic nature of the online gambling market in Austria, technically illegal foreign operators actually delivered 65 percent of the revenues in the online vertical and 85 percent of online growth.

The Austrian government has a reportedly 30 percent stake in Austrian’s only officially approved and licensed online casino, Win2Day, and has not widened licensing beyond that, although it still demands around 40 percent of Austrian revenue achieved by foreign operators, and last year raised Euro 155 million from this source.

Revenue from the overall gambling market in Austria grew 4 percent year-on-year in 2017 to Euro 1.675 billion.

Online revenues showed the greatest growth rate last year at 11 percent y-o-y, reaching Euro 283 million, compared with land casino, slots and sports betting which contributed Euro 716 million (2016: Euro 700 million), and offline-online lottery revenue of Euro 676 million – up Euro 20 million on the 2016 number.

The Austrian government has made no secret of its plans to curtail the activities of foreign operators; late last year the Interior Ministry unveiled plans to pressure ISPs into blocking unlicensed operators despite the fact that the government has so far declined to provide such licensing. Earlier this year the Finance Ministry published but then withdrew draft legislation to tighten gambling regulatory provisions.

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