Microgame ramps up Italy with football game tie
Italian giant Microgame has signed a deal to incorporate virtual sports games into its People's Network, the biggest online player community in Italy, ahead of the World Cup this year - thelatest of a series of moves to expand its offering to Italy's newly-regulated online gambling market, the largest in Europe...
ITALIAN GIANT MICROGAME has signed a deal to incorporate virtual sports games into its People’s Network, the biggest online player community in Italy, in the latest of a series of recent moves to expand its offering to that country’s newly-regulated online gambling market.
Founded in 1996, Microgame is Italy’s largest independent remote gaming service provider, with more than 1.3 million game accounts and market share in poker and sports betting of 25% and 28% respectively. Its 2008 gross gaming revenues exceeded 85m (£76m).
Italy, which began regulating online gambling in 2007 and is still adding to the number of games authorised, is the biggest online gambling market in Europe.
The deal with UK-based Football 1×2 Games ahead of the World Cup this Summer will see 1X2’s range of 24 games incorporated in the first half of this year, and follows Microgame’s deal earlier this month with rummy software provider RM Royal Media to incorporate rummy games into the network and October 2009 deal with Net Entertainment for the delivery of NetEnt’s CasinoModule platform.
Under the latest tie, Football 1×2 will provide numbers and themed games including its flagship virtual football game ‘Football1x2’, a flash player product which simulates a football season in an hour, as well as World Cup 2010, an update on its popular Germany ’06 World Cup game.
Microgame president and chief executive Fabrizio D’Aloia said: “Many of our clients come from the sports betting sector and look for new models to continue to win customers and compete on the market. Football1x2 is therefore a particularly interesting product because it combines the guaranteed margins of instant win games with the emotional involvement of traditional sports betting.”
As well as its recent deals for Rummy and a new casino module, Microgame signed a deal with Parlay Entertainment to launch two online bingo networks a year ago ahead of the anticipated approval of bingo by Italian regulators in the first quarter of 2009.
Private equity firm Monitor Clipper Partners (MCP) took a majority share in Microgame from investment fund Cambria in October last year.