Italy iGaming Dashboard – July 2018
The World Cup did little to revive the dot.it market in June, with a relatively modest 3% rise in GGR over the previous month.
Total igaming GGR rose to €116.25m, a small increase on May’s lacklustre performance – the lowest so far this year at €112.40m.
The lack of enthusiasm was perhaps to be expected given Italy’s failure to qualify for this year’s World Cup, although online sports betting figures were up on the month, rising to €47.59m from €40.8m in May.
When retail sports betting was taken into account, the rise was more significant, with GGR from retail and online combined rising to €112.80m from €92.92m in May.
Given the events of this month, with Italy’s new government introducing a blanket ban on gambling advertising from January next year, a retail presence is set to become much more important for operators in Italy.
The charts below could provide a useful indication on how the market could change in future. One shows Italy’s top 10 sports betting operators in terms on online market share, while another breaking down the market leaders taking into account both online and retail.
Speaking at iGB Live! in Amsterdam last week, Ficom Leisure senior partner Christian Tirabassi said that operators without a retail presence are likely to be severely impacted by the new ban.
“Companies that do not have a land-based presence, allowing them to use that as a way to acquire online customers, will really struggle. The leaders are the ones who have a land-based presence,” he said.
This is equally true of casino and poker operators and while in June PokerStars retained its market lead in casino and poker (tournaments and cash), it will be interesting to see if it can remain on top once the ban is in place.
Click on the drop down options below to compare how Italy's igaming market has performed on a monthly or annual basis. Revenue figures for online-only sports betting start from October 2016, with operator market shares from May 2017.
All data and figures are processed by leading European corporate advisory firm Ficom Leisure, a specialist in all segments of the betting and gaming sector.