Spain introduces a single online gambling deposit limit across all operators
The Council of Ministers approved a system of joint deposit limits for online gambling in Spain on Tuesday. For the first time, the cap is calculated per person rather than per operator, aggregating deposits across all licensed platforms.
Spain’s DGOJ reports one-third of online gamblers use multiple operators, creating measurable risk
For years, Spain’s deposit limit system worked by setting deposit caps independently, without knowing, or being able to know, how much that same person was depositing on the other platforms where they also held an account. The result was predictable: anyone who wanted to spread their activity across several operators could multiply their real exposure without formally breaching any rule. The limit existed on paper; in practice, it depended on the number of open accounts.
After reviewing market data for several months, the Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ), Spain’s gambling regulator, found that approximately 31 percent of online gamblers use multiple operators simultaneously. This is a sufficiently large group for the shortcomings in the previous system to cease being a theoretical issue and become a measurable one, with real consequences for the risky gambling behaviours that regulation seeks to prevent.
What changes and the limits introduced by the decree
In essence, the Royal Decree introduces a single deposit tracker per person that aggregates deposits made across all operators in which they participate, regardless of the number of operators involved. The limits set by the regulation are €700 per day, €1,750 per week and €3,300 over a four-week period, and they are activated by default for anyone gambling in the regulated Spanish market. Those wishing to modify or remove them may do so, but through a specific procedure which, as the regulator explained, includes enhanced safeguards providing information on the risks associated with gambling, so that changing the limit is not a simple click but a conscious act.
The proposal reached the Council of Ministers via the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030, whose head, Pablo Bustinduy, had identified player protection as a regulatory priority of the legislature. DGOJ will be responsible for operating the system, which must develop a technological tool capable of coordinating in real time the information needed to verify that limits are complied with at all times and across all operators simultaneously.
A system that coordinates without operator interaction
One of the most relevant aspects of the measure’s technical design, and one explicitly highlighted by the regulator, is that coordination does not rely on direct information sharing between operators, but is centralised within the DGOJ, which serves as the sole verification node. The decision to centralise the system in the DGOJ is not technical; it is political. The alternative, operators sharing data with each other, would open a privacy debate that no government wants while seeking to pass player protection rules. By centralising the function in the regulator, the decree aims to avoid that issue before it arises, although its success will largely depend on the robustness of the technological tool that the DGOJ has yet to build.
What remains unresolved once the institutional process concludes
The decree has been approved, and the legal framework exists. But the most interesting question is not the one already answered; it is the one that remains open.
When will the DGOJ’s technological system become operational, enabling real-time operation? And what happens in the interim period between the regulation entering into force and the infrastructure being ready to verify cross-operator limits without any margin for error?
The regulator has announced the instrument but has not set a date for the machinery required to make it work. It is in that gap between the rule adopted and the technology deployed where it will be decided whether this decree changes anything tangible in the life of the individual with three tabs open, or whether, for now, it only changes the paper on which the rule is written.
This article was first published on the Spanish SiGMA News page on 24 June 2026.
Subscribe HERE to SiGMA’s Top 10 News countdown and SiGMA’s weekly newsletter. Stay up to date with all the latest iGaming News from the world’s iGaming authority, and benefit from subscriber-only offers.
