Flutter considers joint bid for main Italian lottery licence

The Italian regulator has opened the bidding process for the nine-year lottery licence.

Ireland.- Flutter Entertainment is still considering a bid for Italy’s main lottery licence. Sources told the Irish Times that the gambling giant, now listed in New York, is evaluating options to make a joint bid with another party or as part of a consortium before the March 17 deadline set by the customs and monopolies agency ADM.

Flutter would likely have to compete with incumbent IGT, formerly Lottomatica Holdings, which has run Italy’s oldest lottery for three decades. Its current licence ends in November, and it is widely expected that IGT will bid to retain the licence.

The Italian regulator has set the minimum bid for the licence at €1bn. It estimates that the nine-year contract has a gross value of €4.3bn. Ticket sales reached €8bn last year, and the winning operator will be granted a 9 per cent commission on turnover, a rise from 6 per cent on IGT’s current contract.

Sisal, which Flutter bought in 2022, runs the rival lottery SuperEnalotto. It is proving most valuable to Flutter as a means to introduce lottery customers to online gaming and sports betting via scan codes on tickets, which allow Flutter to market its offerings despite the ban on gambling advertising in Italy.

In September, Flutter boosted its Italian presence further with a deal to buy Snaitech, the country’s third-largest online gambling operator, from Playtech for $2.6bn. The deal is expected to be completed by the middle of the year and would give Flutter a 30 per cent share of online betting in Italy.