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Where should we begin when it comes to discussing the European online gambling market? The European market has seen its fair share of ups and downs, but also have led the way in the introduction of games, betting styles and platforms since the inception of the industry.

We are going to speak of the European market in general terms on this page; obviously, there are some significant differences in each individual country’s approach to online gambling.

For now, let’s review some of the essential common elements that anyone should be looking at when they are choosing an online gambling site to play from Europe.

Here Are Our Top Recommended European Online Gambling Sites:

• The European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) is the Brussels-based trade association representing the leading online gaming and betting operators established, licensed and regulated within the EU. EGBA works together with national and EU authorities and other stakeholders towards a well-regulated online gambling market which provides a high level of consumer protection and takes into.
• EU28 - Online Gambling Gross Win (€bn) At expected growth rates, online gambling gross win - in Europe is expected to rise from €19.6 billion in 2017 to €24.7 billion in 2020. Source: H2 Gambling Capital. Please do not reproduce without their permission.

Europe Gambling Statistics 2019

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Europe Gambling Statistics Today

We review all the European-facing sites we can find, from the most established brands to the brightest of newcomers. Of course, every site is a little bit different, and many have restrictions depending on where you live. With that in mind, we encourage you to read our individual reviews to learn about each company in detail. To help you get started, we have compiled a list of our top 5 recommended European Gambling Sites above, which we are sure will offer you a fantastic experience.

There is no single answer to this question. With a region made up of so many different countries, it is not surprising to see that there are also various stances on online gambling. While the region is very advanced compared to North America regarding the legalities of online gambling sites, for many countries it is still a work in progress. In fact, the European gaming regulation map looks similar to that of the individual U.S. states.

In each of our individual country reports, you will get an in-depth review of that country’s regulatory environment. With the introduction of the European Union, it seemed like the collective wrote an onion about its stance on many topics, including gambling.

For the purposes of a general review let’s highlight a few in summary form:

The UK have long been operating in a regulated environment, and in fact, the Internet Gambling Act enforces the fact that to legally accept UK players, an online gambling website needs to apply for and receive a license from the Gambling Commission. This application process is rigorous, and the Gambling Commission does not look favorably at companies who have in the past accepted players from unregulated markets.

The Spanish Gambling Act was entered into law to help manage the federal oversight of regulated gambling, which was before that left up to the individual states. As a result of this legislation, operators can apply for a license that if received will allow them to legally accept Spanish players to gamble on all forms of online games.

The French also have a form of regulated online gambling, which allows licensed operators to allow sports betting, poker, and horse racing. Despite their love of card games, there is no option for obtaining a license to offer online casino games, so any operators who can provide those games in addition to poker and sports in other jurisdictions must shut them off for any players that come from France.

The Italian government looked to increase tax revenue and capitalize on the country’s love of soccer by introducing legislation to allow sports betting in the mid-2000s. This allowed anyone who acquired a license to take sports betting action either online or in a land-based retail environment. Amendments to that law over the years added other online betting options such as lottery, casino and poker and today Italians have a full range of products to select from when they are choosing an online gambling site.

Of course, all these regulations are regularly updated, so it is important that you review this page often to get the most up to date data and information. Also, even though there are a series of regulations limiting play of some or all games online depending on the country, there is no precedent for a player being prosecuted under these laws. While we cannot definitively tell you that online gambling is legal from a player perspective, it is safe to say that these governments have no current plan to curb the industry by going after every individual who bets online.

From an operator perspective, there are a few European jurisdictions where an online gambling site can get a license which will allow them to “legally” operate their companies. Of course, this license still has to mix with the individual European country laws, so this licensing actually exists as a way to protect players from shady operators stealing their money.

The four jurisdictions in Europe were an online gambling site can apply for a license are Alderney, Isle Of Man, Malta, and Gibraltar. A site does not need to acquire more than one license (although some have) and each location has its own individual benefits.

Fortunately for European players, the amount of regulation they find in the region opens the doors for all sorts of payment processing options. What this means for players is a choice to use debit and credit cards, third-party payments companies, and even Paypal to make their deposits and withdrawals.

What does this look like? Here is a partial list of third-party e-cash payments providers for the European market:

Some of these may not be available in your country, but there is no doubt that you will have heard of many of these and may even already have accounts with them, which will make your online gambling experience even easier!

Finally, when you are researching what online gambling site to play at, you should look to see if they offer games in your local currency. Most sites will offer games in Pounds or Euros, which covers a significant amount of people, however, if you are in a country with its own currency, we don’t want you to find yourself paying adverse exchange rates just to get the currency into your account. Our reviews of European-facing gambling sites outlines all the currencies that a site accepts.

Europe Gambling Statistics 2020

Mobile Gambling in Europe

As we discussed, the European online gaming market is more mature than their North American counterparts.This is best seen in the way that Europeans gamble on their sports, especially soccer.

Allowing players to gamble from their mobile devices means that the tens of thousands of possible bettors sitting in any soccer stadium have the opportunity to place wagers on what they are watching in real time.

Online operators quickly built mobile-friendly platforms to accommodate this type of betting, and that quickly spread to all forms of sports betting. These days, European players can play all their favorite online games directly from their phones or tablets, including most casino games and poker. Each individual European country has their own laws in place, but many countries also allow for native apps to be downloaded to devices to enhance the quality of the player experience further.

Finding the Best Promotions From European Gambling Sites

When you are looking for a European online gambling site, it’s important to take into consideration what types of promotions a site offers and to make sure that their offers fit your needs. If you are a sports bettor and most of a site’s promotions are free-spin-based, for example, then we wouldn’t recommend you make a deposit. The bonuses you receive at a site are part of the value proposition that will assist in making you a profitable player over the long run.

With so many different games being offered by the biggest online gambling sites, marketing departments for these companies are working overtime to make sure all their promotional offers are attractive to any player who comes along. On top of the free chip and free bet promotions designed to reward players for creating accounts without depositing, you should be looking for the best return on your initial deposits and any loyalty programs the site offers to extend your play.

Europe Gambling Statistics History

Finally, with so many countries in play, many online gambling sites tailor some promotions to be localized for specific countries. For example, you may find a poker promotion that rewards players from France only to qualify for a local live tournament or sporting event; those types of promotions offer great value as the player pool is likely much smaller than for the site’s global promotions.

What About Customer Service for All These Customers?

Customer Service can be a minefield for many online gamblers. Getting through to a live person to speak with at the time you need them can be a frustrating process, which becomes even worse when you realize that the person with whom you are speaking does not speak your language. No amount of Google translate can help in these situations; it usually makes the process slow and painful.

Most of the large online gambling sites that offer games to Europeans also provide customer service in several languages. This is usually determined by the number of players from a given country that is in the site’s database. Sometimes this specialized customer service is only available during peak hours, but in a worst case scenario you will always be able to email the site with your issue, and you will most likely receive a response back in your language.

North American online gamblers have a significant amount of envy when they see all the options Europeans have for regulated, legal online gambling.

Add in some killer promotions, and it’s entirely clear that any European that has the ability to gamble online should be able to find exactly what they are looking for to suit their needs.

Gambling is a popular form of entertainment in countries across modern-day Europe. From the Casino de Monte-Carlo with its grand adjacent opera house and centuries of gaming history to the 200 year-old Baden-Baden Casino in Germany, Europe is home to some of the world's best-known gambling venues.

It's hard to lump together all of Europe's diverse nations and customs. Europe proper is made up of fifty countries stretching from Russia in the East to Portugal in the West, and from Norway in the North to Malta in the South.

European citizens live within reach of a number of different gambling hotspots thanks to easily-accessible mass transit and inexpensive air travel. The French Riviera, particularly the city of Nice, is the traditional home of roulette. Italy's island of Lido (and the area around Venice in general) is another haven for European gamblers - appropriate, since the world's first 'casino', in the sense that we understand it, was built near Venice in the mid-17th Century. The UK is best-known as a hotbed of sports and race betting.

The History of Gambling in Europe

Though people native to modern-day Europe have been gambling for thousands of years, the first recognizable forms of wagering that happened on European soil involved simple dice contests. These games spread during the medieval period and became so popular that King Richard had to issue a royal order in the year 1190 to curtail his soldiers' gambling.

Betting on cock fights became commonplace throughout the West over the next three hundred years, as did wagers on bird races and chess matches. In parts of the UK, particularly England, a modern-day obsession with sports and race bets has its roots in this aspect of 14th Century Euro culture.

While the English were finding new animal contests to place bets on, Continental Europeans were discovering and creating altogether new ways to gamble. Sets of playing cards, invented in the Far East, made their way through Russia and then Eastern Europe. These new tools of the trade caught on quickly, and dice games like Hazard waned in popularity in most of Europe. Dice remained somewhat more popular in France - the French love for a home-spun dice game called crapaud ensured a permanent place for dice in the casino world. You may know crapaud as 'craps.'

Casino-style gambling, in forms recognized by today's gamblers, didn't begin in earnest until the late 18th Century, with some properties from those early days still open and operating. The Casino de Spa in Belgium opened for business in 1769 and is still operating, though obviously the games played today are quite different than those of the mid-18th Century.

Types of Gambling

As a melting pot of cultures from the East and the West, Europe is home to many different people from many different traditions. The coming together of so many divergent peoples is what led to the variety of games in any Vegas casino today - our canon of gambling contests was put together over time mostly by European cultures. In modern Europe, every type of gambling popular elsewhere in the world is available, though not all games are played (and not all are legal) across the continent. Here's a breakdown of Europe's favorite ways to wager.

Casino Gambling - European taste for gaming varies depending on what region and sometimes even what country a bettor finds himself in. In France, the birthplace of roulette, that game is still very much a highlight of any gaming floor. Bettors in Monte Carlo prefer their game Punto Banco over any of the other Continental imports. Chemin de fer is the game of choice for some in Central Europe. Game variety in Europe creates a much livelier atmosphere than in hotspots like Las Vegas, where most casinos offer the same games. Casino gambling isn't legal in every European country, and laws sometimes depend on an even more complex municipal or regional code than national law. In parts of Europe where casino play is permitted, it is a major pastime.

Lotteries - The world's first lotteries weren't in Europe - they were in parts of Asia and the Arab world - but some countries in Europe latched onto this type of gambling more ferociously than in the lands where the game was born. The first European lotteries took place in the Middle Ages sometime during the 15th Century. Like in their land of origin, and every land that legalized lotto games afterwards, these early lottery drawings were designed as fundraisers for church or municipal projects, or in some cases to raise a standing army or fund a far-off war. Lottery games continue to be popular across Europe - some ten dozen different lottery game providers operate within Europe's fifty countries, a testament to the widespread appeal of these simple wagers.

Sports & Race Betting - Since Europe is the traditional home of so many forms of gambling, it should be no surprise that it is also a traditional haven for sports and race betting as well. Some parts of Europe are absolutely mad for sportsbook and racebook action - the UK is the leading example. Great sport and race betting traditions can be found in nine European countries, each with their own distinct history. The nations of Poland, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Belgium, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, and Holland all have plentiful race courses and a cultural heritage of gambling on races and sporting events.

Private Betting - No doubt social (sometimes called 'private') betting takes place in Europe as often as it does anywhere in the world - perhaps more often given the generally-liberal gambling regulations found in European countries. Visitors to Europe interested in participating in private poker tournaments or charity raffles using games of chance and skill can consult local law to determine if the game is operating legally. The law varies so much from one European destination to another, it is difficult to give an overall picture of the amount of private betting that goes on or the legality of those bets.

Internet Gambling - Much like private gambling, laws in Europe regarding online gambling vary so much that it is difficult to make any blanket statements. Most Europeans are allowed to place bets online, play in online poker rooms, or pull the virtual levers of Internet slots. We'll discuss the legalities of online gaming in general a little further down.

Online Gambling Europe Statistics

European Gaming Laws

Compared to the United States, for example, European governments are generally more relaxed about gambling, from sports and horse race wagers to bets on casino table games and card tournaments. That doesn't mean that every square mile of European land is a gambler's paradise. Here are a couple of examples of European countries that do not allow some popular forms of gambling.

Germany, a country with many land-based casinos, is downright brutal when it comes to Internet betting. Twelve of Germany's thirteen states have outlawed Internet-based games of chance (allowing Germans to play certain card games and place sports and race bets online), with the holdout state in a legal bind because of its decision to allow this type of gambling. It's unusual for a country with otherwise loose gaming laws to crack down so hard on Web-based gambling.

Norway is another oddity in the world of Europe's varied gambling laws. It's a country that's politically liberal but has very nearly outlawed all forms of betting. The government of Norway is now considering a total ban on Internet gambling, to go with their ban on casino-style gaming and sports betting. Norwegians are allowed to bet on races, but with just two race courses in the entire country, it's not nearly as popular as in other parts of Europe.

Legal Online Gambling in Europe

Online gambling is another area in which it is difficult to generalize about the entire continent of Europe. Again, in general, European countries are more lenient when it comes to licensing and regulating legal online gaming than in Australia, the United States, or Canada. Essentially, the legality of online casino, poker, and sports betting in Europe comes in three categories.

Open - In many European countries, online gambling is legal provided the bettor is of a certain age (18-21 for the most part) and that the operator of the games has proper licensure and is regulated by a recognized licensing jurisdiction. This includes the UK, France, Italy, Spain, and most other Euro nations.

Geographically-restricted - In some parts of Europe, people can only place online bets through sites licensed and regulated by their own national authorities. Currently, Norway is an example, though online betting is so restricted there as to be non-existent. Another example is Portugal, where only sites explicitly licensed and regulated by Portuguese authorities are legal.

Illegal - The Netherlands is now the best example of a European nation that has outright banned online gaming in all forms. In the Netherlands, placing wagers on any game of chance or skill, whether it is a horse race, a football match, or the spin of a roulette wheel, is fully illegal.

Modern casino gambling was essentially born throughout Europe. In the West, the traditions of race and sports betting and even lottery tickets can be traced back through this diverse continent. Though the legal landscape in Europe is ever-changing, it can be said that in general this continent is among the friendliest to gamblers of all stripes of any part of the world.