Bet365 continues to hold a commanding lead on Italy’s online sports betting market, which welcomed a new chart entrant in December.
Figures compiled by Italian gaming news agency Agimeg.it show the market generated online sports betting turnover of €391.8m in December. Combined online and land-based sports betting turnover was €770m, bringing 2016’s total sum wagered to nearly €7.5b, up 35% from 2015’s total. Land-based betting improved nearly 26% to €3.4b, while online betting surged 46% to over €4b.
As usual, Bet365 ruled December’s online betting turnover chart with €128m, representing 32.7% of the total spend. Gala Coral’s Eurobet brand was a distant second with €37m (9.5%), followed by Sisal (€32.3m, 8.2%), Snai-Cogetech (€29.8m, 7.6%) and Lottomatica (€22.7m, +5.8%).
Recent market entrant Sky Betting & Gaming entered the bottom of the charts with €600k in sports betting revenue, despite the fact that the company has only just begun raising awareness of its Skybet.it site. This week saw Skybet launch a stylish new TV campaign (viewable here) promoting its new iPhone app around the tagline ‘Punta al meglio.’
The market’s online casino revenue totaled €45m in December, bringing the annual haul to nearly €439m, representing a 34% year-on-year gain for the vertical. December’s bounty was led by Lottomatica, which captured an 11% share. Runner-up Sisal wasn’t too far back at 8.5%, while Amaya Gaming’s PokerStars brand ranked third with 7.8%, ahead of Eurobet (6.6%) and William Hill (6.2%).
Speaking of PokerStars, it continued to dominate the Italian online poker market, capturing commanding shares of both tournaments (74.4%) and cash games (46.4%), with no other operator managing double digits in either category. Stars’ December tournament share was up 8.2 points year-on-year while its cash game share was down six points.
But the overall online poker market continued to decline. December’s tournament stakes totaled €7.2m, while cash games added €6.5m. For 2016 as a whole, tournament stakes were down 2.4% to €69.6m, while cash games declined 9.8% to €83.7m.
In the also-rans category, fixed-odds horserace betting generated revenue of €76.5m in 2016, while online bingo gained 7.1% to €27.3m. On the land-based casino front, Italy’s four casinos reported revenue of €292.7m in 2016, led by Casino Venice with €95.3m, of which 58% came via slots.
