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The Observatory on Online Gaming of the University of Milan ran an event of presentation of a report on the status of the Italian online gaming market in 2013 which disclosed interesting information with casino games in Italy likely to reverse the current decline of the sector.Their findings cannot put operators in a very good mood as the gross gaming revenues of the Italian online gaming market were equal to € 725 million in 2013, showing a minor decline of 3% compared to 2012. However, it is more interesting to see the break-down of such data through the different categories of games.
Indeed, casino games grew by 63% mainly driven by the launch of online slots at the end of 2012 which now generate half of € 240 million deriving from this category of games. On the contrary, the gross gaming revenues generated by poker games, that in the past were the main product in the market, were reduced by 35% with only € 222 million of gross gaming revenues. At the same time sportsbetting games recovered from 2012 that was defined as the “terrible” year reaching almost € 200 million which are still far from € 243 million generated in 2009 despite of the technological development and of the launch of mobile devices in the last years.
The above mentioned data raise some questions as to the future of the sector, is the Italian online gaming market in a decline phase? The answer is no! And indeed the head of remote games at AAMS informed the audience during the event that he had been able to convince eight major casino games suppliers to prevent their operators from offering their games to Italians through non-Italian licensed platforms by the end of 2014.
The Italian casino unlicensed market is currently estimated to be 50% of the entire Italian casino market which means that if Italian players will not be able to find anymore their favorite casino games on .COM platforms shall switch to licensed platforms whose GGR might potentially double! Also, the same measures are in the pipeline with reference to suppliers of poker and sportsbetting platforms in order to attract as many players as possible to licensed platforms and boost the growth of the market. Additionally, the potential implementation of liquidity sharing among European jurisdictions for poker games and the approval of regulations allowing the offering of new types of bets/events should contribute to the further growth of the market together with the potential change of the tax regime for sportsbetting.
The 700,000 Italian active players of 2013 are likely to increase in the next years, but such growth shall also be driven by innovation. And indeed 64% of active players are over 35 which is very surprising in a sector that should be part of the new economy. But such data might be due also by the delay in the launch of mobile gambling platforms in Italy that for some operators generate only 6% of their revenues. Currently 63% of the top 20 operators in the country launched a mobile platform, but such platforms because of delays in their development and regulatory restrictions have not reached yet the quality of services of .COM platforms. Also it was considerably stressed during the event that the gambling sector has not showed to be innovative and therefore players get bored if all the platforms look the same with the same games and features.
But a boost towards the innovation is likely to be given by regulatory changes on which AAMS, the Italian gambling regulator, is currently working. Indeed, as part of a law recently adopted, the Italian Government has been given a broad discretion in setting new rules for the sector that for instance might start from an easier registration process which at the moment is a titanic task for players with so many fields to be filled in. Also, AAMS is open to suggestions from operators on changes to be adopted and therefore this will be their big opportunity to contribute to the growth of the market.
With so many changes in the pipeline, the Italian gaming market shall certainly watched very closely in the next months. I will follow the developments of the above and as usual feel free to contact me, Giulio Coraggio (giulio.coraggio@gmail.com), to discuss. And follow me on my Facebook page, Twitter, Google+ and become one of my friends on LinkedIn.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Alessandro Prada
