Italy saw major gains in both land-based and online gambling revenue in January.
Figures released by Italian gaming news agency Agimeg show that land-based and online sports betting brought in total revenue of €150.5 million in January, up 15.5 percent over January 2017. Online revenue fueled most of that growth up 27.5 percent to €60.8 million. Retail betting’s grew 8.7 percent.
UK operator Bet365’s Italian site led online sports betting operators with revenue of €10.1 million. SKS365 Group’s Planetwin365 brought in €8.5 million with Snaitech (€5.7m), Eurobet (€5.1m) and Sisal (€4.9m) following on the list.
Online casino revenue set a new monthly revenue record with €59.7 million, a 30.4 percent increase over 2017. Lottomatica topped Pokerstars with 9.03 percent of the market, edging out PokerStar’s 9.01 percent.
Online poker, however, saw a decline of 1.1 percent €8.7 million while cash games were down 9.4 percent €6.7 million. PokerStars led in online poker despite a fall of 10 percent in market share to 64.4 percent.
The country also saw 888 Holdings officially debut its Italian poker site. 888 ranked eighth on the cash games chart with a 3.16 percent.
Italy is expected to join in a poker liquidity sharing arrangement with Spain, France and Portugal, but so far, a clear timeline for when it will join as not emerged.
