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The Italian gaming authority published the market data up to 2016 which show a gaming market that has been continously growing.
The Italian gaming authority has finally restarted its very much appreciated practice to publish its market data. This event was celebrated with the publication of the hystorical data relating to the period 2006 to 2016.
The Italian gaming market is speeding up its growth
According to the published data, the gaming spending has been of € 19.488 million in 2016, with a major increase if compared to 2015 when it was of € 17.362 million. Such growth was mainly driven by
- sportsbetting with an increase from € 965 million to € 1.131 million;
- online gaming with an increase from € 486 million to € 591 million which should not include online sportsbetting;
- AWPs (comma 6A) with an increase from € 6.683 million to € 7.483 million; and
- VLTs with an increase from € 2.553 million to € 2.766 million.
Where is the Italian online gaming market heading to?
The data published by AAMS is aggregate data, while at the beginning of the year, the Univerisity of Milan had provided more specific data on the online gaming market which is coming from the AAMS database. Such data reveals that in 2016:
- The spending of the whole online gaming market reached € 1.03 billion; while
- The games that have been growing more quickly are online casino games with a +35% and a spending of € 441 million and online sportsbetting with +33% and a spending € 350 million.
What are the drivers of the growth?
The main driver of the growth is definitely the reduction of the unlicensed offering. This is the consequence also of the “curing” procedure of unlicensed CTDs which led to an increase of the betting shop market, but since such operators also had a strong online presence it also drove a considerable growth of the online gaming market.
This means that players who used to play on unlicensed gaming websites are now playing on licensed sites. Such circumstance creates an additional appetite for the upcoming new Italian online gaming licenses which should available very soon according to the news coming from the regulator.
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