Spain's Online Casino surge puts the Canary Islands at a regulatory crossroads
The numbers are difficult to ignore. Spain's online gambling market generated €410 million in gross gaming revenue during the second quarter of 2025 alone, an 18.6% jump from the same period a year earlier. Casino games, slots in particular, drove the bulk of that growth, accounting for nearly 53% of total revenue.
For the Canary Islands, a territory that welcomed more than 18 million tourists last year and depends heavily on the spending habits of visiting Europeans, those figures carry a specific weight. The archipelago sits at the intersection of two fast-moving forces: a digital entertainment sector expanding at double-digit rates and a regional government determined to tighten the rules governing it.
How Welcome Bonuses Reignited the Spanish Market
The catalyst behind the current boom traces back to a single court ruling. In April 2024, the Spanish Supreme Court struck down key restrictions on gambling advertising and promotional offers, effectively re-legalising welcome bonuses that had been banned since 2021. The impact was immediate. According to the DGOJ's quarterly reports, new player accounts surged by 38% year-on-year in Q1 2025, and total deposits climbed 23.7% to €1.35 billion in Q2. Slot machines — the vertical that benefits most from sign-up incentives — saw revenue spike by 33.6% compared to the previous year.
Marketing spend followed: operators poured €164.5 million into advertising during Q2, a 37% increase driven partly by a 53% rise in sponsorship costs. As Chambers and Partners' Gaming Law 2025 guide details, the ruling did not remove all restrictions — operators still face strict requirements around responsible gambling messaging — but it removed the single biggest brake on customer acquisition.
The result is a market where 77 licensed operators compete for a growing pool of 1.7 million monthly active players, and where platforms like videoslots have built catalogues exceeding 9,000 titles to capture a share of the demand.
The Canary Islands' Double Exposure
What makes the archipelago's position unusual is its dual exposure to the online gambling boom. Unlike mainland regions where player growth is primarily a digital phenomenon, the Canary Islands receive millions of British, German and Scandinavian tourists who arrive with gambling accounts already active on their phones. A British visitor landing in Tenerife does not stop using UK-licensed platforms; a Swedish tourist in Gran Canaria continues playing on Swedish-regulated sites.
The islands, therefore, experience the effects of multiple jurisdictions' gambling markets simultaneously, without any of the tax revenue flowing to the regional government. Spain's online gambling tax — between 7 and 25% of gross gaming revenue, depending on the product — goes to the national treasury. The Canary Islands benefit from a special fiscal regime that offers lower rates on many economic activities, but digital gambling revenue is collected centrally by the DGOJ.
This disconnect between where the players physically are and where the revenue lands has become a quiet point of friction, particularly as the regional government spends more on harm-prevention campaigns targeting both residents and visitors.
Law 2/2025: Tightening the Local Framework
In June 2025, the Canary Islands Parliament approved Law 2/2025, amending the regional gambling statute that had been in place since 2010. The reform is focused on land-based venues — prohibiting minors from using gaming terminals, mandating a minimum 200-metre buffer zone between gambling arcades and schools, and restricting the opening of new premises in areas already saturated with gaming machines.
But its significance extends beyond physical venues. The Spanish Ministry of Territorial Policy and the Canary Islands government have opened formal discussions to coordinate regional and national gambling policy, an acknowledgement that the line between offline and online gambling is blurring. One area under negotiation is advertising: local policymakers want stronger controls on digital marketing and sponsorship visibility in channels frequented by teenagers. The DGOJ, meanwhile, is developing an algorithm mandated by Royal Decree 176/2023 that will detect risky gambling behaviour across all licensed platforms, with implementation expected in 2026.
According to European Gaming's analysis of the Q2 2025 DGOJ data, operator marketing budgets are growing faster than revenue — a ratio that regulators on both sides of the table are watching closely.
What a Tourism Economy Stands to Learn
The Canary Islands are not the only European tourism destination grappling with how digital gambling interacts with visitor economies. Malta built its entire modern financial services sector around iGaming licensing. Gibraltar hosts some of the world's largest online betting operators within a few square kilometres.
But neither of those territories attracts 18 million leisure tourists per year, nor do they face the political pressures that come with overtourism debates already dominating local headlines. The archipelago's challenge is more nuanced: how do you regulate an industry that your residents participate in, your visitors carry in their pockets, and your treasury barely touches? The answer emerging from the 2025 reforms is coordination rather than prohibition.
Joint deposit limits — a framework that caps how much a single player can deposit across all licensed operators — are scheduled for publication in Spain's Official Gazette this year, with a twelve-month adaptation window. If implemented as designed, the system would apply regardless of whether a player is sitting in Madrid or poolside in Lanzarote, creating a nationally uniform layer of protection that the Canary Islands' regional rules currently cannot provide on their own.
For an archipelago whose economy runs on hospitality, getting the balance right between accessible entertainment and effective safeguards is not an abstract policy question — it shapes the experience of every visitor who opens a casino app between the beach and the hotel bar.
Share:
