Italian market decline slows in February

The Italian egaming market has shown signs of recovery after a difficult January with gross gaming revenues (GGR) across all products growing 7.7% in February, according to figures released by Italian regulator AAMS, though a number of verticals have seen further decline in revenues.

The market saw revenues rise to €78.6m, up 21% on January’s takings of €65.2m, with skill games, card games and game of chance continuing to perform strongly, posting GGR up 55% year-on-year to €46.5m for the month. However, after posting revenues of €52.5m from skill games, card games and game of chance in January this year, GGR declined 11.4% month-on-month.

Fixed-odds sports once again declined with GGR down 23.6% from €33.5m in February 2011 to €25.6m this year, but up 377% on this January’s takings of €5.36m itself a 71.7% year-on-year decline. Only a strong performance from skill games, card games and game of chance prevented an overall decline in January, with a 49% increase in GGR seeing revenues rise to €52.5m, helping the market grow by 0.8% year-on-year.

After experiencing a 54.4% decline in GGR in January, horse betting showed signs of recovery with revenues of €0.66m for February, though this was still 36.6% down on 2011, and the decline in totalisator betting worsened, with revenues down 56% to €0.081m, leading to a 53.8% decline for the year so far. This suggests that the racing industry has failed to fully recover from a strike in January, which saw racing shut down for most of the month, after Italy’s new austerity government cut funding to the sector.

Takings from bingo fell further, down 24% year-on-year to €4.1m for the month, and 22.4% down for the first two months of the year with total takings of €8.8m down from €11.4m in January and February 2011.

Scratch and win games also continued to suffer, following up a 34.5% drop in GGR in January with a 54.1% fall in February after amounts wagered declined 44% to €2.24m.