After a record-breaking start to the new year, Italy’s igaming market fell back in February as coronavirus and sporting cancellations started to bite.
Online revenues for the month totalled €180.27m, down 7.2% on January’s all-time high of €194.28.
While GGR fell on a month-on-month basis, February’s total did represent a 23.9% rise on the same month the previous year. It’s worth noting also that February figures have trailed January figures in each of the past three years.
While sports betting continued to take the biggest share of the online pie last month, it was here that the drop was most pronounced. Online betting revenues fell almost 10% to €86.68m, from €95.25 in January.
The drop in GGR was less significant in online casino, which fell by 4.5% to €78.13 in February, from €81.82 the previous month.
The end result was that betting accounted for 48.09% of online activity (down from 49.02% in January), while casino and slots made up 43.34% (up from 42.12%).
It’s likely the gap between the two main verticals will narrow further as the coronavirus pandemic continues to cause the cancellation of sporting events around the globe.
Bet365 continues to lead the online betting market, though its market share fell to 15.0% last month, from 15.8% in January. Its closest competitor, Playtech-owned Snai, meanwhile, saw its share grow to a record high of 13.5%, up from 12.9% in January.
PlanetWin365 continued to lose ground and with 11.4% of the market in February (down from 12.2%) is now in danger of being overtaken by Sisal, whose share rose to 11.1% in the month, up from 9.7% in January.
In retail, sports betting revenues suffered a greater fall than was the case online, with GGR falling to €98.58 in February, down 15.6% from January’s €116.74.
Snai overtook Goldbet to become Italy’s leader of the combined retail and online betting market, with its 15.7% share (up from 15.1% in January) nudging Goldbet (15.5% in both months) off the top spot for the first time in five months.
In online casino, PokerStars extended its lead even further, with its market share rising to 10.71% in February, from 10.12% in January. In contrast, second-placed Sisal saw its share fall to 8.12% from 8.48% the previous month.
After four consecutive months of growth across both tournament and cash games, poker revenues dipped last month, by 9.9% and 11.5%, respectively.
PokerStars remains the market leader by a long way across both markets, with 55.25% of the tournament market and 42.59% of the cash market.
Scroll down to see the full interactive datasets.
All data and figures are processed by leading European corporate advisory firm Ficom Leisure, a specialist in all segments of the betting and gaming sector.
Ficom Leisure also provides monthly figures on the New Jersey online market in the New Jersey iGaming Dashboard, Pennsylvania in the Pennsylvania iGaming Dashboard, Indiana in the Indiana iGaming Dashboard and Iowa in the Iowa iGaming Dashboard, all of which are available on iGB North America.
It also provides quarterly figures on the Spanish online market in the Spain iGaming Dashboard, on the Danish market in the Denmark iGaming Dashboard, and on the Portuguese market in the Portugal iGaming Dashboard.
