Virgin Group Aiming For 5% Of Italian Online Poker Market

Italy’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.”

Other news:   Multi-state online poker compact bill introduced in Pennsylvania

Poker News
07 Feb 2017
PokerStars has announced a strategic partnership with Microgaming in order to bring a whole range of complimentary products to its online casino games offering. Amongst the digital slots that are likely to be featured on PokerStars’ casino client by the summer of 2017 are such popular games as Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, and Game of
11 Mar 2016
888poker is the second biggest poker site in the world, and over the past few months has been consolidating its position in the industry. Following on from being unveiled as the official sponsor of the 2016 World Series of Poker, and organizing 888 Poker Live at Aspers London, the online operator has now signed a
18 Nov 2015
French entrepreneur Alex Dreyfus (photo) has relentlessly been pursuing his vision of “sportifying” poker, with the Global Poker Index (GPI), and the Global Poker League (GPL) amongst his many innovations. As part of his strategy, Dreyfus has also been seeking partnerships with mainstream sponsors in order to promote greater interest in poker, and last week
10 Aug 2015
Jason Somerville has signed a new partnership deal with Twitch to continue his #runitup stream for the next two years, meaning fans can be guaranteed to see the popular pro in action until at least mid-2017. Commenting on the agreement, the 28 year-old tweeted: “very excited to have signed a new 2-year partnership with @Twitch!