The licensed markets of the south
Spain, Italy, France and Portugal licensed online gambling between 2006 and 2015, Italy first, earlier than Germany or the Netherlands, and their regimes have the marks of that first generation: product restrictions written before mobile, advertising rules rewritten after a backlash, and tax structures that have been adjusted repeatedly. Belgium, though northern, belongs with them in one respect, having moved to one of the most restrictive advertising regimes in Europe. Together they show a licensed model that has been in place long enough to have been reformed twice, and each reform points the same way.
Spain
Spain's Gambling Act of 2011 created a national licensing regime for online gambling under the Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ), alongside the regions' authority over land-based gambling. General licences for betting, contests and "other games" and singular licences for each product (roulette, blackjack, poker, slots, bingo, sports betting) are granted in windows, taxed at 20 per cent of net gaming revenue, halved for operators genuinely based in the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, with mandatory identity verification of every player, a national self-exclusion register (the Registro General de Interdicciones de Acceso al Juego) checked before play, and technical certification of gaming systems.
The defining Spanish reform is Royal Decree 958/2020 on commercial communications, which banned gambling advertising on television and radio outside a one-to-five in the morning window, banned sponsorship of sports teams and shirts, banned welcome bonuses for new customers and restricted bonuses to customers of thirty days' standing who had been verified, and restricted online and social-media advertising. In a judgment of 2 April 2024 the Supreme Court annulled several provisions, including the restrictions on promotions to new customers, the ban on well-known people appearing in advertising and parts of the online and social-media rules, on the ground that limits of that kind need sufficient cover in law and cannot be set by a regulation alone; the broadcast window and the sponsorship bans survived. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs has said it wants to restore the annulled articles with the rank of law, including through amendments to its customer-service bill, but that bill became Law 10/2025 without them, and the consolidated Gambling Act shows no amendment to reinstate them; operators have applied the surviving rules cautiously. Spain also introduced in 2023 Royal Decree 176/2023 on safer gambling environments, which requires operators to identify intensive players, defined as those with net losses of 600 euros or more a week for three weeks running (200 euros for players aged 25 or under), send them a specific message and a monthly activity summary, and stop them depositing by credit card; and it cooperates with other regulators, having signed a joint declaration with the French, German, Portuguese and British regulators in 2022.
Italy
Italy has one of the longest histories of online licensing in Europe: electronic and telephone betting was permitted from 1998, online sports betting was opened to licensed operators in 2006, and online poker and casino games followed under a 2009 law. The regulator, the Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli (ADM), grants concessions rather than licences, under a tendering system that was overhauled by Legislative Decree 41/2024 with a new concession regime: a nine-year, non-renewable online concession for a one-off fee of seven million euros, a national-domain (.it) website owned and run by the concessionaire that may not be made available to third parties, and a maximum of five concessions per group, requirements for substance and technical certification, and gaming taxes set by product. The reform was designed to consolidate a fragmented market and raise the cost of entry: 46 operators applied in the tender that closed on 30 May 2025, and in September 2025 ADM awarded them 52 concessions.
Italy's other defining feature is the 2018 Dignity Decree, whose Article 9 imposed a near-total ban on gambling advertising and sponsorship, including on sports shirts, television, online and events, with sports sponsorship banned since 1 January 2019 and only neutral, informative content permitted. The ban is enforced by the communications regulator, AGCOM, with fines of 20 per cent of the value of the sponsorship or advertising and at least 50,000 euros, which can fall on media owners and platforms as well as operators, and it is interpreted through AGCOM guidelines; the industry has argued since 2018 that it drives customers to unlicensed operators who advertise freely, but the ban remains in force. Player protection runs through identity verification within 30 days of account opening, a national self-exclusion register (the RUA), limits that players must set before they play, and technical controls on games run by ADM and its technology partner Sogei; land-based gambling also runs on ADM concessions, alongside four authorised casinos.
France
France licensed online gambling in 2010 under a regime that reflects its policy of limiting gambling: online sports betting, horse racing betting and poker are licensed, but online casino games (slots, roulette, blackjack) are prohibited, a rare instance of a large European market excluding casino altogether. The position has survived a government budget amendment to open online casino, tabled in October 2024 and withdrawn in favour of a consultation that was then suspended. The regulator, the Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), established in June 2020 under an ordinance of 2 October 2019 to replace its predecessor ARJEL, with expanded powers over the state lottery and racing monopolies, licenses operators, approves each operator's promotional strategy every year along with its action plan against excessive gambling and gambling by minors, and attaches conditions to those approvals: for 2026 it required every operator, for the first time, not to exceed the promotional budget it had announced. Sports betting has been taxed on gross gaming revenue rather than stakes since 2020, and from 1 July 2025 the social contribution on sports betting rose from 10.6 to 15 per cent of gross gaming revenue, poker moved from a levy of 0.2 per cent of stakes to 10 per cent of gross gaming revenue, and a new 15 per cent levy was applied to operators' advertising and promotional spending, excluding sports sponsorship.
French player protection is distinctive for the regulator's active supervision of operators' marketing plans, its restrictions on advertising content and volume, its focus on excessive-gambling indicators, and its enforcement against unlicensed sites through blocking orders that, since a law of 2 March 2022, its president can issue administratively rather than through the courts; in 2024 it sent 232 blocking and delisting orders covering 1,337 URLs. The prohibition on online casino, and the resulting size of the unlicensed casino market, is the French version of the channelisation debate; a 2023 PwC study for the ANJ estimated that 3 to 4 million French players had used illegal sites in the previous twelve months, mostly for casino games that are banned online, and the question of licensing online casino has returned to the budget debate.
Portugal
Portugal's online regime, in force since 2015 under Decree-Law 66/2015 and the Serviço de Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos (SRIJ) within the tourism authority, licenses casino, poker, bingo and betting, through three-year licences with no cap on their number, with a tax structure that has been the market's main issue: a tax on gross gaming revenue for casino and poker, and a tax on stakes for fixed-odds sports betting. The 2020 budget replaced the sliding scales with flat rates, 25 per cent of gross revenue for casino games and 8 per cent of turnover for sports betting, but did not move betting to a revenue basis, and the 8 per cent turnover tax still applied in 2025. The regime requires identity verification before play, a central self-exclusion register run by the SRIJ, tools for players to set financial and time limits, and certification of operators' technical systems; advertising is regulated under the general advertising code with gambling-specific restrictions, and the regulator has become more active against unlicensed operators and in cooperation with other regulators. The market is small but growing: in 2025, 18 licensed operators held 31 licences, and online gross gaming revenue reached a record of about 323 million euros in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Belgium
Belgium's Gaming Commission licenses online gambling only to operators that hold a land-based licence (a casino, an arcade or a betting licence): only a casino licensee may apply for the supplementary A+ licence for online casino games, and the same pattern applies to arcades and betting. This "land-based anchor" model limits the market to established Belgian operators and their online partners, with taxes set by the regions. Its player-protection rules include a national exclusion register (EPIS), checked every time a player enters a casino or arcade or places a bet, online or offline, mandatory identity verification, a default deposit limit of 200 euros a week per site, which only players not registered as defaulters with the National Bank's credit register can have lifted, since September 2024 a ban on bonuses, free games and other gifts to players, and an advertising regime that is among the strictest in the EU: a royal decree of 27 February 2023 banned gambling advertising from 1 July 2023 with narrow exceptions, ended sponsorship at sports venues from 1 January 2025 and ends sponsorship of professional sports clubs from 1 January 2028. Belgium also raised the minimum age to 21 for all games of chance covered by its Gambling Act, casinos, arcades and betting, online and offline, under a law of 18 February 2024 in force since 1 September 2024; and in April 2018 its Gaming Commission concluded that the paid loot boxes it examined in video games were games of chance, and so unlawful without a licence. The Belgian model, land-based anchoring plus a near-total advertising ban plus default deposit limits, is among the most restrictive licensed regimes in the EU, and its channelisation figures are contested in the same way as the Netherlands'.
The southern pattern
Spain, Italy, France and Portugal licensed early, reformed their advertising rules after public reaction (Spain's 2020 decree, Italy's 2018 ban, France's regulator-supervised volumes), and have all tightened player protection through intensive-player rules, deposit limits and self-exclusion. Their tax structures have moved towards revenue, though not everywhere: France now taxes betting on revenue, while Portugal still taxes sports betting on stakes. Their product scope differs at one point, France's casino prohibition, and their enforcement against unlicensed operators has strengthened through blocking powers and regulator cooperation. Belgium sits at the restrictive end with anchoring and an advertising ban. For an operator, the four southern markets need local product certification, local identity integration, local advertising review and, in Italy, a concession tender; for the industry as a whole, they are the evidence that advertising bans and bonus restrictions arrive in every large market eventually.
What to take from this lesson
Spain licenses through the DGOJ at 20 per cent of revenue, with a 2020 advertising decree that restricted broadcast advertising and sponsorship and banned welcome bonuses until the Supreme Court annulled the bonus rules and other provisions in 2024, and a 2023 safer-gambling decree. Italy grants concessions through the ADM under a 2024 reform (nine years, seven million euros) and has banned gambling advertising since 2018. France licenses betting and poker through the ANJ, prohibits online casino, and supervises operators' marketing plans directly. Portugal licenses through the SRIJ with a tax flattened in 2020 that still charges sports betting on stakes. Belgium anchors online licences to land-based ones, applies default deposit limits, raised the age to 21 and has enacted one of the EU's strictest advertising bans. The southern pattern is early licensing, advertising reform after backlash, and steadily stricter player protection.