Italy iGaming Dashboard – July 2019

The struggles of the Italian sports betting vertical have seen revenue from the country’s regulated market decline in June, according to the latest figures from Ficom Leisure.

Italy’s gambling regulator AAMS has again 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. These suggest that the bingo vertical sees a particularly heavy drop-off in June.

We estimate that Italian bingo revenue would have fallen by around 10% month-on-month, which suggests total revenue of €2.7m for June.

While Italy posted a 1.1% year-on-year increase in gaming revenue to €117.5m, the market was down sequentially as sportsbooks suffered a seasonal slowdown in June.

While the Italian women’s football team made it to the quarter finals of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, this failed to capture the attention of Italian bettors. Total sports betting revenue was down 26.9% year-on-year, largely due to a weak month for retail betting.

Retail revenue dropped to €40.0m, almost half May’s total and down from €65.2m in the prior year. While online held up better, it still saw revenue decline 10.7% to €42.5m.

However, June was a particularly strong month for bet365, which leapt ahead of its competitors to take a 21.4% share of the market. This saw it race ahead of SKS365’s PlanetWin365, previously its closest competitor. PlanetWin365 saw its market share decline to 11.2%, allowing the Playtech-owned Snai to replace it as the second largest brand with a 12.4% share.

Casino revenue declined sequentially, though its total of €62.5m did represent a 12.6% improvement on June 2018. Poker, across cash games and tournaments, struggled, with revenue down both year-on-year and month-on-month.

PokerStars grew its its casino market share to 10.6% over the month, and continues to dominate both cash poker and tournaments. Its closest competitor in casino remains Lottomatica, with a market share of 7.9%.

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.