A new Spanish government study has found that women remain a minority in the country’s online gambling market, but their numbers are rising sharply, led by younger players and accompanied by a marked increase in money deposited into betting accounts.
The report, published by Spain’s Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ), offers one of the clearest official snapshots yet of how women are participating in the licensed online gambling sector. It shows that more than 300,000 women were active online gamblers in 2024, making up 17% of the total active player base of nearly 2 million. The study says that figure sits within “a growing upward trend in the number of annual active players experienced over the last five years, with particular emphasis between 2023 and 2024”.
The findings come as Spain’s gambling market continues to expand in spite of a tightening political and regulatory climate, with safer gambling, deposit controls and behavioural monitoring moving to the centre of official policy.
Younger women are driving the rise
The strongest signal in the report is generational. Women under 35 accounted for 59.4% of all active female online gamblers in 2024, and the fastest annual growth came among the youngest group. “The group that grew the most was that of the youngest female players, with growth in the group above 30%,” the report said.
That pattern broadly mirrors the commercial profile in Blask’s customer data, which places the core online player base in the 18-34 bracket, with 25% aged 18-24 and 35% aged 25-34. It also suggests that female participation is not simply expanding, but becoming more deeply rooted among younger adults who are already heavily represented in the wider market.
By product, betting and casino games dominate female participation, well ahead of bingo and poker, the report says. It adds that sports betting remains the most prevalent activity among women using licensed operators, while preferences between betting and casino games swap depending on whether players are above or below the age of 35.
Spending patterns are shifting
Women deposited €608m into online gambling accounts in 2024, out of a market-wide total of €4.6bn. That amounts to 13.32% of all deposits. Over the past five years, the sums deposited by women rose by 117%, outpacing the 101% increase recorded for the overall market.
Yet female players still deposited less on average than the market as a whole. In 2024, women deposited an average of €2,019, compared with €2,482 across the general online gambling population.
The daily rhythm of those deposits also stands out. The report says women’s weekly deposit behaviour was “relatively constant throughout the week”, in contrast to the broader market, where Saturdays and Sundays attract the most deposits. Over the course of a day, activity climbed towards the evening peak, with the study noting that the highest point came at 8pm, “coinciding with the time of maximum sporting offer in Spain”.
Women overrepresented in identity fraud cases
A more troubling finding concerns identity fraud. The DGOJ report says that while men make up 83% of the online market, women account for 46% of declared identity fraud cases under Spain’s anti-impersonation protocol. In total, 4,003 women said their identities had been used fraudulently in 2025.
The study argues that this almost certainly understates the scale of the problem, since some victims do not report it, particularly when there are no tax consequences or when the suspected perpetrator is someone they know or even a member of their family.
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