Italy: casino drives quarter-billion return in November
The total represents the first time the dot.it market has generated a monthly return of more than €250m (see interactive Chart 1 below).
According to figures supplied by Ficom Leisure to iGB, Flutter Entertainment-owned PokerStars retained its market share lead in the casino vertical, its 11.31% take of the €123.6m total leaving it 2pps clear of nearest rival Sisal (Chart 7).
Stars also benefitted from an uplift in online poker activity in November under the lockdown imposed by Italian authorities to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Poker tournament revenues increased by nearly 43% month-over-month to €11.22m and ring game revenues by close to 35% to €7.21m (Chart 2). Stars had a 55% market share of tournament and 44% share of cash game GGR in November (Charts 10 and 11).
In online sports betting, long-time market leader Bet365 took a tumble from top spot, its 11.6% share putting it behind Entain-owned Eurobet, Playtech-owned Snai, Goldbet, Sisal and Planetwin365 (Chart 8).
All five operators overtaking Bet365 in November run retail businesses they were forced to shutter under lockdown.
With the retail channel reporting a loss of €3.57m last month compared to online revenue of €111.06m (Chart 2), a migration of some of this retail activity online was enough for these five operators to overtake Bet365 in the rankings.
The overall sports betting performance contrasted with the record totals for sports betting recorded in Italy in October, where remote revenue of €125.77m and retail revenue of €117.62m pushed the dot.it market to the highest ever total of €243.39m (Chart 2).
Scroll down for the infographic, to track market growth since 2017, and shifting revenue shares over the months and years.