Italian egaming market grows 28% in a year
The Italian online gaming market grew 28% in 2010, according to data released by the country's regulator AAMS.
The explosive growth of tournament poker in Italy last year saw the Italian online gaming market grow by 28% in 2010, according to data released by Italian regulator AAMS yesterday.
With tournament poker accounting for the majority of activity in the skill gaming vertical, which provided 65% of total online gaming turnover in Italy last year, skill games turnover grew 34% year-on-year in 2010 to 3.15bn, from the 2.35bn recorded in 2009.
Fixed odds sports betting, which together with skill games accounted for 93% of remote gambling revenues in Italy last year, grew 11% to 1.35bn, from 1.22bn the previous year.
Bingo also grew strongly in 2010 from its launch as a regulated product vertical in December 2009, with revenues reaching 146.14m by the end of 2010, representing 3% of turnover from the market.
In a statement AAMS said that the dominance of skill games and sports betting, combined with bingo’s strong growth over the last year, confirmed that these product verticals were “better suited to use online”. The three product verticals together amounted to more than 96% of turnover from the territory last year.
The launch of poker cash games in February 2011 and casino in June 2011 has been estimated by analysts to double turnover from the Italian market in 2012.
More to follow…