Virgin Group Aiming For 5% Of Italian Online Poker Market
November 3, 2009 8:07 amItaly’s online poker market continues to grow at an impressive rate and Britain’s Virgin Group is hoping to capture at least a 5% share of it within a year. The British venture capital organization is currently operating alongside the leading Italian online gambling group ‘Cogetech SpA’ in a revenue-sharing partnership which Virgin sees as important for its success. Simon Burridge, the chief executive of Virgin Games, said:
“We are ‘white labelling’ it on the back of Cogetech. It is a lot less expensive. Cogetech does (player) registration and the banking. For Virgin it is just a marketing operation and that is what it does best.”
The Italian poker market has been subject to government scrutiny since its inception and has to follow a set of rules, which although a little complicated, basically states that only tournament play is permitted and subject to Italy’s State Monopolies Autonomous Administration (AAMS) approval, thus precluding cash games on Italian sites; Italian sites can only accept Italian taxpayers and the operating site’s servers must be located in Italy. In addition, players are monitored for time spent on the site and restricted if deemed too long.
It is partly for these reasons why some foreign companies have found the Italian gaming market a challenging proposition in the past but Virgin group has already got off to a good start and chief executive Simon Burridge commented:
“Since a “soft launch” in September Virgin’s online poker has gained 8,000 players. After six weeks we are on target to take 5 percent of the market after 12 months. The market is 200 million euros. So by December we are looking to be 10 million euros. We are looking to break-even in five or six months.”