Greece’s iGaming boom drove 88% of the country’s gambling market growth in H1 2026

Greece’s gambling regulator, EEEP, presented the numbers on October 6 during a working visit from the finance minister. Across the whole market, GGR reached €1.56 billion for the first half of 2026, up 8% year over year, while state revenue climbed 14.4% to €627.3 million, growing almost twice as fast as the market itself. That tax figure doesn’t yet reflect the higher rate on online casino, poker, and slot machine winnings that took effect July 1, so the next report should show an even bigger jump.

Online gambling did almost all of the heavy lifting behind that growth. iGaming GGR rose 18.7% to €647.2 million, against a comparatively flat 1.6% increase for land-based venues, which brought in €910.6 million. Of the roughly €116 million the overall market gained, €102.1 million, or 88%, came from online operators alone. That pushed iGaming’s share of total market GGR from 37.8% a year earlier to 41.5% now, and the segment is on track to pass land-based gambling within the next several years at this pace.

EEEP commissioned Deloitte to model where the market goes next, and the firm’s numbers paint a lopsided future: total market GGR growing from €3.07 billion in 2025 to roughly €5.25 billion by 2040, a 72% increase, but with online gambling accounting for +125% of that growth against just +39% for land-based venues. Deloitte expects online GGR to keep growing at 5.6% annually between 2031 and 2040, more than four times the 1.3% pace it projects for physical casinos and betting shops over the same stretch.

The regulator used the same presentation to lay out what it’s doing about the illegal side of the market. EEEP estimates illegal betting hit around €1.8 billion in 2025, with nearly 10% of the population having gambled on unlicensed sites at some point. Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis announced that authorities have filed criminal complaints against 18 influencers, whose Instagram accounts collectively reach 3.6 million followers, for promoting 11 unlicensed websites and eight unlicensed providers. Pierrakakis framed the message bluntly: popularity doesn’t grant immunity, and influence carries responsibility. Under Law 5313/2026, individuals found to have promoted illegal gambling online face fines ranging from €5,000 to €50,000.

Behind the enforcement numbers sits an AI monitoring platform EEEP has been running since June. The system has checked 3,283 sites, flagged 1,001 as illegal, and added 734 to the regulator’s blacklist, work the agency says now accounts for 75% of what used to fall to human staff, cutting review time by at least 2 to 3 times.