Italy Asserts Momentum and Expansion with a Healthy January Performance
Published March 17, 2021 by Lee R
Land-based closures have brought out the best in Italy's iGaming market.
The Italy market continues to roll along, after another strong sequential showing for January.
Online Records
In fact, the Italy iGaming market broke its overall revenue record for the third month running, according to Ficom Leisure, which stands as quite an achievement to augment widespread closures of land-based venues that continue as a result of the pandemic.
Record Growth
Quoting figures from Agenzia delle dogane e dei Monopoli, Ficom revealed that the €162.85m ($193m) in revenue online casino and slot operators generated for January represented a 6% month-on-month rise and a whopping 99% year-on-year jump from January 2019.
Maintaining Momentum
The robust nature of these numbers is a revelation, but was already established by the end of the previous fiscal year.
Italy's overall GGR reached €335.9m for a year-on-year increase of just under 57%, while just falling short of December's all-time high of €359m. January's totals reflect the significant momentum which Italy's operators generated through H2 2020.
Pandemic Factor
Logistically, Italy has been hit as hard as anyone by the pandemic as far as shutdowns and land-based disruption are concerned.
Verticals
The ongoing lockdowns continue to channel players online in Italy. As such, online verticals were the heavy contributors to GGR totals, with casino and slot contributing 48.47% of revenue and sports betting 42.76%.
Online sports betting's €143.64m take dropped from December’s €177.1m, but still represented a healthy 66% increase year-on-year.
Sports Betting
As far as the primary Serie A football season which all sports betting is centered around, full month sports betting totals only dropped twice year-on-year (November and January) despite bookmakers being closed most of the time.
Private Competition
As far as individual performance is concerned, PokerStars led the casino and slots market from with 11% market share; Bet365 climbed from sixth to third place in the sports betting market with a 12.2% market share, just behind Snai (12.4%) and Sisal (12.8%).
Outlook
Italy was not so long ago a market seeking to establish continuity, but the market has really risen to the challenge during the lockdowns, and a robust model in Italy has emerged with good tidings for sustainability and further private entry to set the table for further market expansion.
