Spanish bettors will face new deposit restrictions spanning all licensed operators in the country, introduced through a royal decree approved on Tuesday 23 June.
The decree establishes a daily deposit limit of €700, a weekly limit of €1,750, and a four-week limit of €3,300 across all licensed platforms simultaneously.
Prior to this change, individual operator limits stood at €600 daily, €1,500 weekly, and €3,000 monthly, meaning players could previously multiply their allowance by holding accounts across multiple operators.
The Directorate-General for Gambling Regulation, known as the DGOJ, will oversee a centralised deposit control system tracking player activity across the entire regulated sector.
The DGOJ will now be responsible for developing the technical infrastructure capable of monitoring deposits in real time across the whole Spanish market.
Pablo Bustinduy, the Minister of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030, proposed the policy as part of efforts to implement the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and tackle inequality.
The DGOJ has stated that 31% of active online gamblers in Spain bet across multiple operators, a figure it says “underscores the need to incorporate new preventative and protective tools.”
Spain’s new framework has European precedent, though its four-week cap of €3,300 is considerably more generous than Germany’s existing cross-provider monthly limit of €1,000.
Spanish online gambling trade body JDigital has responded critically, arguing that the regulator has consistently “prioritised introducing restrictions on the legal market without accompanying measures to strengthen the competitiveness and attractiveness of regulated operators.”
JDigital has also questioned the statistical basis for the intervention, pointing out a discrepancy between figures suggesting roughly 80% of online gamblers use only a single operator and the DGOJ’s published 31% multi-operator figure.
The trade body argues that if only around 20% of the market is affected, the new rules cannot be considered a proportionate regulatory response.
JDigital has also raised doubts about the technical complexity of building a centralised computer system that reacts in real time to player activity across the entire regulated market.
Royal decrees have previously been used to push through major gambling reforms in Spain, most notably a November 2020 decree that banned gambling advertising outside a window between 1am and 5am.
That earlier decree also restricted sports sponsorships, celebrity endorsements, and promotional offers, but Spain’s Supreme Court annulled much of it in November 2024, ruling that such restrictions must be supported by full legislation and be proportional to their aims.
Given that legal history, industry observers expect similar proportionality challenges to be mounted against the new cross-operator deposit framework.
On the question of black market displacement, JDigital has cited a report prepared by EY suggesting that 23.4% of surveyed users would play on unlicensed platforms, with 9.3% explicitly stating they already do.
The trade body has claimed the EY report indicates unlicensed operators “are accessed by one in four players,” a characterisation critics argue misrepresents the underlying data.
Regardless of how those figures are interpreted, industry sentiment is clear: further restrictions on licensed operators risk pushing consumers toward unregulated alternatives as the European online black market continues to expand.
