Official language: Spanish
Population: 46,157,822
Currency: Euro (EUR)

Current Exchange Rate
1 GBP = 1.0681 EUR
1 USD = 0.6754 EUR

Sports Betting in Spain
Sports betting in Spain has not been around for very long. In fact, the first legal private Spanish betting shop only opened in April of 2008. Prior to this, sports betting was controlled entirely by the state. State-run sports betting is still available in Spain, but it is lottery-style betting rather than pari-mutuel or fixed-odds. A bi-weekly football pool game is provided by Loterías y Apuestas del Estado, and the game is available at their 11,000 sales points across Spain.

The recent changes in Spanish law that made sportsbooks legal also regulated how and where they can be opened. Spain was divided into 17 areas, and each area now has control over gambling licenses within that region. Once a sportsbook has a license for a region, they can open as many betting shops as they like on that license. All sports can be wagered on, but bets on politics and religion are banned.

Online Sports Betting in Spain
Spain is now paving the way towards legal, regulated internet gambling. Plans have been in motion since 2002, but it wasn’t until recently that real progress was made. Soon, licenses to operate internet gambling sites will be made available to EU-based sportsbooks and other gambling operators. This will make Spanish online sportsbooks widespread.

Until the laws change, there will be no true Spanish internet sportsbooks. Large international sportsbook sites that are hosted in other countries do have a presence in Spain. In fact, many of Spain’s sports teams are sponsored by large foreign sportsbooks like BWin. Some already offer Spanish versions of their website, and as the law opens up, the popularity of internet sports betting in Spain will continue to grow.