Italian iGambling Market Soars in January

Italy’s online gambling market has enjoyed a hugely successful start to the year with sports betting returning double-digit year-on-year growth, and the country’s online casino revenues hitting a new all time record.
According to the impressive results released by the Italian gambling press agency Agimeg, online sports betting revenue totaled €150.5 million in January, representing a 15.5% increase versus the same month last year. Furthermore, online sports betting accounted for €60.8 million of that amount, or 27.5% higher y-o-y compared to an 8.7% gain on the retail betting front.
Leading Italy’s online sports betting market in January was UK company Bet365 with €10.1m in revenue, followed by Planetwin365 (€8.5m), Snaitech (€5.7m), Eurobet (€5.1m) and Sisal (€4.9m).
Meanwhile, Italy’s online casino segment generated €59.7 million, up by a massive 30.4% compared to January of 2017. Leading the way last month was Lottomatica with a 9.03% share of the overall online casino market, followed closely behind by PokerStars (9.01%), Sisal (8.33%), Eurobet (7.23%) and GVC Holdings’ Bwin (5.91%).
Unfortunately, online poker was unable to share in the success enjoyed by these two important online gambling verticals, though, and in January tournament revenue contracted by 1.1% to €8.7 million, while cash games saw their revenues plummet by 9.4% to €6.7 million. PokerStars still continues to maintain its dominance of the market, and currently commands a 64.4% share of tournament revenues, lower by 10% year-on-year, and a 40.5% share of cash games, or 7% less than it did last January.
In January, Italy also welcomed 888 Holdings to the market with the company having already captured a 3.16% share of overall cash game revenues, and a 1.26% share of the country’s tournament market, ranking 888 at number eight in both categories.
Finally, Italy is organizing a massive public tender of up to 120 iGaming licenses before a deadline is reached on March 19th, with successful applicants then paying €200,000 for a license that will last until the end of 2022. Moreover, just 40 or so of the new licenses are believed to be for existing permit holders, meaning that the country’s number of licensed operators is set to triple in 2018.