Bet365 continues to dominate Italy’s online sports betting market, according to new stats covering the first quarter of 2016.
Italian gaming industry news site Agimeg.it reports that Bet365 garnered more than one-third of all online sports wagers handled by Italian-licensed operators in the three months ending March 31, roughly on par with Bet365’s performance on the FY15 charts.
Italian-licensed online operators reported total sports wagers of €970m in Q1, of which €346.2m (35.7%) was wagered with Bet365’s local site. The next closest operator, Gala Coral Group’s Eurobet brand, was a very distant second with €101.3m (10.4%), while third place went to William Hill with €75.9m (7.8%).
The rest of the online top-10 reads as follows: Sisal €71.3m (7.3%), SNAI-Cogetech €68.4m (7%), Lottomatica €50.4m (5.2%), Paddy Power €45.2m (4.7%), Bwin €44m (4.5%), GoldBet €33m (3.4%) and Unibet €13.8m (1.4%).
Perhaps not surprisingly, Bet365 also scored top marks on the list of sites offering the best value for punters, with an average payout of 94.8%, followed by Unibet (93.5%) and William Hill (93%). At the other end of the scale, Goldbet and SNAI-Cogetech were the worst places to wager, with the sites reporting average payout ratios of 85.5% and 86%, respectively.
Agimeg didn’t break out individual operator stats for the virtual betting sector, but did note that virtual wagering revenue improved 11% from Q1 2015 to €47.2m, while the still nascent exchange betting vertical rose 40% year-on-year to €875k.
The land-based sports betting business handled wagers totaling €788m, of which €189.2m was handled by SNAI-Cogetech, while Lottomatica claimed second place with €133.4m and Eurobet not far behind with €126.4m.
Sticking with land-based operations, Italy’s four casinos reported combined revenue of €76.4m in Q1, led by Casino di Venezia with €25.2m. Slots accounted for 62.4% of Q1 casino revenue.
