AAMS posts strongest monthly figures to date for 2012
Cash poker and casino still performing strongly " fixed-odds and horse betting show signs of improvement.
The Italian regulator L’Amministrazione autonoma dei monopoli di Stato (AAMS) has revealed that the country’s egaming industry has enjoyed its most successful months for the year to date, just days after announcing gross gaming revenue growth had slowed to 0.2% during the first five months of the year.
Ahead of AAMS’ merger with L’Agenzia delle Dogane (Customs Authority) to form the Customs and Monopolies Agency “ a move prompted by the Italian government’s austerity drive “ the regulator has revealed that gross gaming revenue (GGR) for May has risen 30% year-on-year, with newly-regulated cash poker and casino pushing GGR from 44m to 57m over the course of the month.
This growth is almost entirely due to increased revenues from poker and casino, which has seen GGR soar 54%, up to 42m, with players spending around 1.2bn playing online over the course of the month. This is likely to be further improved by the introduction of online slots though the sector is unlikely to see any boost in revenue until the product is launched in December this year.
The figures show that a number of other declining verticals have shown strong signs of recovery, with fixed-odds betting returning to growth after posting a massive 71.7% decline in GGR in January’s figures. After revenues for the vertical fell 29% from 2011’s takings in April, May showed signs of a turnaround with GGR up 1% year-on-year for the sector. However, aside from January’s weak revenues of 5.4m, the 7.9m GGR posted in May is the lowest-grossing month of the year so far.
Horse betting, on the other hand, enjoyed its most successful month after a difficult beginning to 2012, with player spend of 8.8m pushing revenues up to 1.7m for May “ a 53.6% year-on-year increase. However, bingo continued to perform poorly, with monthly revenues of 3.7m the lowest of the year to date.