The group has been looking at expanding in the Spanish market for some time, with a retail base in Malaga currently set to open in Q1 2023.
A fact highlighted by Stanleybet Group CEO, Dr Giovanni Garrisi: "We had started the process for obtaining the licence already in 2019, then the pandemic event inevitably slowed down the procedures. In the meantime, we continued to dialogue with the Andalusian authorities to complete the process once everything returned to normal.
"Now, after obtaining the retail licence for sports betting also in this other highly regulated European country, we are ready to expand into a new market, Spain, which offers great opportunities for our sector. Andalusia represents an extremely vast market with very high development potential. We will start from Malaga, where we are already working on the opening of the first shop, scheduled for the first quarter of 2023, and then continue in the other cities."
Meanwhile, Antonio Stanzani, Stanleybet Country Manager for Spain, added: "The Spanish model envisages two types of shops; the 'tienda de apuestas', a betting agency opened directly by the operator and the 'salon de juegos', a slightly broader definition that includes the shop opened by private third parties, with the affiliation model.”
Stanleybet was interested in finding a partner to enable the implementation of smarter retention strategies and to provide certain insights into player behaviour.