Italian egaming spend doubles due to new products
January-October figures show 174% year-on-year increase following introduction of cash poker in July.
The Italian egaming industry has seen player spend on online poker and casino more than double year-on-year for the 10 months to October, following the rollout of new products in the summer of 2011.
A number of operators went live with cash poker and/or casino offerings in July 2011 and, as a consequence, amounts staked on these products rose 174.3% year-on-year to 10.56bn, compared to the 3.85bn staked in the period from July-October 2011, according to the country’s regulator AAMS.
AAMS, now part of the Italian Customs Authority, also published September’s figures, which showed a year-on-year increase of 256%, with the nine-month period showing greater growth due to the higher proportion of comparative months in which casino and cash poker were unavailable.
The rise in cash poker has come at the expense of the tournament variant, with the ‘online skill games’ category under which it falls seeing player spend fall 47% compared to January-October 2011, coming in at just under 1.1bn, however the two online-specific categories combined have experienced a 98% increase.
Other verticals have not seen the online element stripped out, however figures for sports betting show a 1.3% decline to 3.2bn, while bingo spend fell 10.2% year-on-year to 1.4bn.
The 10-month figures do not account for online slots, which were only launched in Italy last month and have been predicted by eGaming Review‘s data partner H2 Gambling Capital to contribute to the dot.it online casino market potentially increasing in size by two to four times by the end of this year.
AAMS has also issued a breakdown of gambling spend by region, which shows Lombardia, Lazio and Campania as the three areas with the highest player spend. The three regions also boast the highest player spend for online skill games specifically, with totals for all three between 140 to 150m from January to October.
Meanwhile overall gambling spend of 70.3m represents a 12.7% year-on-year increase for the 10-month period. Aside from online cash poker and casino, video lottery terminals (VLTs) showed the greatest growth, with player spend rising 57.9% year-on-year to 15.7bn.