Online gaming revenue grows in Italy

The 2016 figures that were released this week showed a 25 percent year-on-year increase in online gaming revenues in Italy.

Italy.- The Online Gaming Observatory of the Milan Polytechnic University revealed that the Italian online gaming market has grown exponentially in 2016. Gross gaming revenues (GGR) increased 25 percent year-on-year to US$1.09 million.

As revealed by Totally Gaming during an interview with Christian Tirabassi, senior partner at Ficom Leisure, the Italian gaming market is now the second largest in Europe after the UK, which is considered the global benchmark for the gaming industry. Online and mobile gaming holds the 5.4 percent of the country’s gambling industry. ““This growth was achieved on account of the differences in regulating the gambling industry in Italy. The model carried out by the Italian Gaming Authority (ADM) was built through dynamic regulation that progressively strengthened the foundation for the development of the sector through blacklisting and inhibiting 6,000 dot-com websites,” he added. “This act led the leading international suppliers of online gaming software to deny their services to unregulated operators acting on the Italian market. The objective was to make the Italian legal gaming market more competitive and attractive compared to illegal gambling.”

Doxa Research Institute reported that the legal sector is increasing at the same time that the illegal sites are getting down. The online gaming market contributed US$267 million in 2016 to the state budget, a 21 percent increase from the previous year. Italy currently features 84 operators, and there’s been an exponential increase of casino games as well as sports betting. “The main revenue contributors were casino games and sports betting, which together generate more than two-thirds of the total revenues in the industry,” concluded Tirabassi.