Cirsa Enterprises, S.A. (branded CIRSA) is a Spanish multinational casino and gaming‑machine operator founded in Terrassa in 1978. The group runs 447 casinos and gaming halls and more than 83,000 slot machines across eleven regulated markets, making it Spain’s largest casino operator. Private‑equity firm Blackstone bought the company in 2018 and is now floating up to 25 % of its shares on the

Bolsa de Madrid (; Madrid Stock Exchange) is the largest and most international of Spain's four regional stock exchanges (the others are located in Barcelona, Valencia, and Bilbao) that trade shares and convertible bonds and fixed income securities, and both g ...

at a set price of €15, implying a post‑money valuation of €2.5 billion. Cirsa posted record revenue of €2.15 billion and EBITDA of €699 million in 2024, its third consecutive year of all‑time‑high results.

History

Cirsa was founded in 1978 by Manuel Lao Hernández. It is involved in the fabrication and distribution of different types of gambling machines. By 1990, they started to expand their presence outside of Spain. It started with the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...

, then in 1991 went to

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

, and currently over seventy countries around the world. The company generated 349,328,000 million euros of revenue solely in the first quarter of 2018 On 8 April 2022, Cirsa announced the organisation had appointed Antonio Hostench as CEO.

Blackstone takeover

In April 2018, it was announced that

The Blackstone Group Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. It was founded in 1985 as a mergers and acquisitions firm by Peter G. Peterson, Peter Peterson and Stephen A. Schwarzman, Stephen Schwarzman, who h ...

would acquire the company. Blackstone Inc. acquired Cirsa in July 2018 for an enterprise value of about €2.2 billion, according to Refinitiv data cited by Reuters.

Controversies

A 2023

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leak revealed Cirsa was embroiled in a tax dispute over two Moroccan casinos it bought from Israel’s Red Sea Group. Le Desk reported that Cirsa sought reimbursement for past taxes, while investigators questioned inflated fee invoices linked to a shell advisory firm.

References

Gambling companies Gambling companies established in 1978 Gambling websites Gaming websites {{Spain-company-stub