Online sports betting options just doubled for Italian gamblers following that country’s regulator granting approval to 23 new types of markets. The additional wagering markets approved this week by Italy’s AAMS bring the total roster of sports bets available via Italian-licensed sites to 45. Not that the operators of these sites are ungrateful, but they’re still waiting on approval of other customized wagering options, and football season is only so long.
DLA Piper attorney Giulio Coraggio suggested AAMS might also want to relax the rule that makes the regulator responsible for officially certifying the results of sporting events. Operators believe the process is both unnecessary and time consuming, giving punters one more reason to take their action to the .com sites still serving the market without an Italian license. There’s also the minor matter of online sports betting being taxed on turnover as opposed to the gross profits tax imposed on casino and cash poker games. Not for nothing, but the blacklist of gambling domains that Italian ISPs are supposed to be blocking grew by 34 in August to an impressive 4,513, and most of those 34 were sports betting sites.
As for Italy’s virtual sports betting market, Inspired Gaming Group has inked a deal to provide its product to Microgame‘s online, mobile and land-based platforms. Inspired boasts a lengthy list of Italian-facing clients, and Microgame has over 30 B2B partners, all of which are now eligible to partake of Inspired’s offering. Inspired’s managing director of virtual sports Steve Rogers says his company dominates this corner of the Italian market because it has a wide variety of markets, “best-in-class” graphics and is “proven to generate 100% more daily income than competing products in competitive trials.”
