Is padel betting legal?

Padel is treated like any other sport for betting purposes — football, tennis, basketball. The legal question is rarely about the sport itself. It's about the operator: whether the sportsbook you're using holds an active licence from the regulator in the country you're betting from.

Each country runs its own online gambling regime. There is no single pan-European licence: a Spanish DGOJ licence does not cover bets placed from France, an Italian ADM licence doesn't cover Germany, and so on. Operators have to apply, qualify and pay separately in each market they want to serve. That is also why an operator's .com site and its local site are, legally, two different products.

The summary below covers the four markets we track most closely, starting with the UK. Padel coverage differs sharply between them: Spain has the deepest offering in Europe, while the UK, Italy and France are served by only a handful of operators.

Can you bet on padel in the UK?

Yes. Betting on padel is legal in the UK through an operator licensed by the UK Gambling Commission. The question is which licensed operators actually offer padel markets, and that changes often, so check the sportsbook before relying on it.

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) licenses online sportsbooks for the British market. bet365 publishes rules for padel markets and settles them under its standard tennis rules, which means it takes padel bets on at least some markets. Availability depends on the event. For William Hill, Betfair and Unibet, padel was not in their main sportsbook menus when we last checked. Coverage changes often, so check the operator. Betway, licensed in the UK among many other markets, covers Premier Padel.

The UK has no statutory tax on individual gambling winnings; operators pay betting duty instead. Self-exclusion is centralised through GAMSTOP.

What happens to a bet on retirement, a walkover or a super tie-break is covered in how padel bets are settled.

Spain — DGOJ

Spain has the most developed padel betting market in Europe. The regulator is the Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ), a department of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs. The six operators we compare for padel in Spain, Sportium, Codere, Betway, Winamax, Retabet and Kirolbet, all hold a DGOJ licence; which Premier Padel and FIP Tour events each one prices differs by operator and tournament and changes often, so check the operator's padel section before you rely on it.

Residents in Spain should bet through operators holding a DGOJ licence for the Spanish market. The international .com version of a brand is a separate product from its .es site: check which entity and which licence sit behind the domain you are actually using.

Italy — ADM

Italy's online betting market is regulated by the Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli (ADM). Premier Padel has strong fan interest in Italy (the Italy Major is one of the tour's annual headline events), but coverage from ADM-licensed operators is still thin compared to Spain. Most Italian users follow the sport through the international circuit rather than betting locally.

ADM-licensed operators are listed on the regulator's public register at adm.gov.it. The minimum age for online gambling in Italy is 18.

France — ANJ

France's regulator is the Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), the body that replaced the older ARJEL in 2020. Online sportsbooks need an ANJ licence to operate from a .fr domain. The French market is famously smaller and more tightly regulated than Spain's; padel betting is a niche product, served only sporadically by ANJ-licensed operators.

Note that Winamax France (winamax.fr) operates under a separate ANJ licence from Winamax España (winamax.es, under DGOJ). They share a brand but are distinct legal entities — the French site does not currently list padel; the Spanish one does.

Other markets

We don't currently cover legality in detail for markets outside these four. Padel-betting interest exists in Portugal (regulator: SRIJ), Argentina (Lotba/local provincial regulators) and Mexico (SEGOB), but operator coverage in each is too sparse to write a useful guide. If you bet from outside these jurisdictions, the rule of thumb stays the same: only bet through a sportsbook with an active licence from the local regulator. Offshore .com operators that "accept" you from anywhere have no recourse if something goes wrong.

Verifying a licence

Every regulator runs a public register of authorised operators. Three quick checks before opening any account:

1. Look up the operator on the regulator's register (DGOJ, UKGC, ADM, ANJ) and confirm the singular sportsbook licence is active, not suspended or revoked.
2. Check that the licence is for the domain you're using — brand-name and country-suffix mismatches are common.
3. Confirm the operator's published licence number on its own footer matches the regulator's record.

If any of these fails, walk away. This site lists only operators we've verified against the regulator's register, but we make no guarantees and you should always re-check before depositing.

Responsible gambling

Every legal sports betting regime in Europe requires operators to offer self-management tools: deposit limits, time-out periods and centralised self-exclusion. The Spanish RGIAJ, UK GAMSTOP, Italian Registro Unico, and French RNI all work the same way — once registered, you're blocked across every licensed operator in that country.

See our responsible gambling page for the full set of help-line and self-exclusion resources.