Despite the absence of live sporting events caused by Covid-19, Italy’s regulated market proved its resilience last month by managing a performance almost in line with that of last April.
Though last month’s revenue across all verticals of €157.0m represented a 10% drop on the previous month’s total of €174.6m, it was flat year-on-year, when revenue stood at €157.86m.
While sports betting unsurprisingly saw big revenue falls last month, the casino and resurgent poker verticals managed to pick up some of the slack.
Casino and slot GGR rose to a record high of €98.28m, an impressive 4.5% rise in a month that traditionally has seen a month-on-month decline from March. On a year-on-year basis, April’s revenue figures represented a 45.8% increase.
Online casino market leader Pokerstars increased its share of the market even further in April to 14.17%, up from 12.59% in March. While Sisal retained its second place, its share was flat on the previous month.
Sisal’s position may be under threat from the overhauled 888, which has slowly but surely been growing its share of the Italian market. Last month it climbed into third place, taking 7.76% of the market.
Though lagging casino revenues by a considerable way, the performance of poker during the sports betting lull has been much more significant in terms of the percentage uplift.
After registering a phenomenal 135% rise in March, poker tournament revenue continued to grow in April, rising to €20.57m from €16.10m the previous month.
Cash game revenue also increased further, rising to €11.69m from €9.96m in March.
Such has been the popularity of poker during the sports betting shutdown that when combined, tournament and cash games had a higher share of the igaming market last month than sports betting – poker stood at 20.55% while sports betting was 13.31%.
However, this situation is likely to reverse quickly once sporting events get back under way. And though sports betting revenue has dropped dramatically over the past two months, from an online perspective it hasn’t completely fallen off a cliff as punters continue to bet on the markets that are available.
Last month online GGR stood at €20.90m, a more than halving from March’s €49.39m, which itself was a big fall from the €86.68m taken in February.
The closure of retail outlets has led to a reshuffle of the market leaders in the Italian sports betting market, with longstanding online market leader bet365 now holding 22% of the overall sports betting market.
Betfair’s market share has almost doubled from the 11.3% share it held in March. However, with betting shops in Italy reopening this month, its reign over the combined retail and online market is likely to prove short-lived.
All data and figures from the regulator 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, and on the Portuguese market in the Portugal iGaming Dashboard.
