Slovaks lost €1.32 billion in gambling last year, up €130 million compared to 2022 when bets totalled €21.36 billion and winnings amounted to €20.04 billion. Internet casinos are particularly becoming increasingly popular in Slovakia, Martin Bohoš, director general of the Office for Gambling Regulation (ÚRHH), said in mid March.

“As far as numbers are concerned, most Slovaks do online gambling in terms of the sum of bets and winnings,” Bohoš explained. “Anyway, betting games are also a very popular segment, that is, betting, mainly done through online channels. So, this is accessible to a very wide area of customers.”

The levy to the state budget from gambling for 2023 exceeded €301 million, which represents a year-on-year increase of more than €50 million.

“Gambling in Slovakia is on the rise,” said Bohoš. “This situation is not exceptional compared to neighbouring countries.

Bohoš noted that municipalities have very powerful tools to regulate gambling in their territory, in particular so-called prohibitory general binding ordinances. With these ordinances they can prohibit the location of gambling halls and casinos in their municipality. And there are restrictive general binding ordinances, by which they can regulate, for example, the location of gambling halls in the vicinity of schools or school facilities.

Meanwhile, due to the efforts of municipalities to reduce gambling, Bohoš expects a reduction of revenues paid to the state while he also sees a huge risk regarding the rise of illegal gambling halls.

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Bets on presidential election exceeded €2 million

Slovaks placed bets amounting to more than €2 million with the Fortuna bookmaker regarding the most recent presidential election, a three-fold increase compared to the presidential election in 2019. The most popular bet was on the overall winner of the election.

“From the release of the odds until the second round, the volume of bets on a victory for Peter Pellegrini amounted to almost €900,000. In the case of Ivan Korčok, it was more than €500,000,” said Tarek Yacoob from Fortuna’s bookmaking department as cited by the TASR newswire.

Bettors were more inclined to back Peter Pellegrini. After the first election round, the bookmaker recorded more than 5,200 betting slips wagering a total of €380,000 on Pellegrini’s success. Meanwhile, there were 4,500 slips wagering more than €320,000 on a victory for Ivan Korčok.

The highest stakes were placed just before the second round.

“The two highest bets, amounting to €10,000 and almost €8,000, came in just a few hours before the start of the second round,” said Yacoob. “In both cases, the clients predicted a victory for Ivan Korčok, but their hopes weren’t fulfilled.”

As for winnings, the biggest amount was recorded in the first round, when a punter who guessed the winner of the round won over €72,000. The highest winnings in the second round, predicting a victory for Peter Pellegrini, reached €11,400.