Italy iGaming Dashboard – June 2019

Italy’s regulated gambling market has been hit by a weaker performance from the sports betting vertical in May, according to the latest figures supplied by Ficom Leisure.

Italy’s gambling regulator has failed to provide figures for the country’s online bingo market in May. As a result, iGaming Business has provided estimates based on previous years’ performance. This suggests that the market tends to decline over the month.

We estimate that Italian bingo revenue would have fallen by around 1.9% month-on-month, which suggests total revenue of €3.0m for May.

Italy’s regulated gambling market has posted strong year-on-year growth in May, though sports betting revenue has fallen sharply from April, when the vertical posted its strongest performance in years.

Based on figures supplied by regulator AAMS to Ficom Leisure, and iGaming Business’ in-house estimates for bingo performance, revenue was up 25.0% year-on-year to €140.4m.

Casino was the stand-out vertical for the month, with revenue growing 22.0% to €69.9m. PokerStars, with 10.5% market share, led the way in May, followed by Lottomatica, with 7.97%. The International Game Technology-owned business was able to beat Sisal, April’s second-largest operator in terms of casino market share, into third place, with 7.71%.

Poker tournaments and cash games, however, posted marginal year-on-year declines in revenue. PokerStars, as expected, remains by far the largest operator in the vertical, accounting for 59.0% of tournament fees, and 42.4% of cash game revenue.

Sports betting, meanwhile, posted strong year-on-year growth. Land-based betting revenue was up 49.4% from May 2017 to €77.9m, while online revenue grew 37.7% to €56.2m.

However, the market suffered in comparison to April, one of the strongest months in years.

April’s land-based wagering revenue amounted to €98.1m, the highest total since December 2017, and fell 20.6% in May. Online fell 25.6% from April’s €75.1m – again the highest total since December 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.

Ficom Leisure also provides monthly figures on the New Jersey online market in the New Jersey iGaming Dashboard, available on iGB North America. It also provides quarterly figures on the Spanish online market in the Spain iGaming Dashboard, on the Danish market in the Denmark iGaming Dashboard, and on the Portuguese market in the Portugal iGaming Dashboard.