The online gambing industry knows no crisis in Italy: it certifies the annual Research Centre’s online game sponsored by the School of Managment of Politecnico di Milano has doubled in 2011 the total deposits from 4.8 to 9.5 billion euros.
A drive up to the volume of bets were poker cash and online casino games. Without these products – which represent about 83% of assets – the market for so-called traditional games (tournament poker and skill games, bingo, betting, prediction contests, horse racing, Scratch and Win for Life Superenalotto) would dropped by 24%, stopping at “only” 3.6 billion euros.
In fact, five games in 2011 made up almost 99% of the collection online. The first product is poker cash with a collection of over 4.6 billion, or 46.8% of 9.85 billion played. Following the tournament poker (2.25 billion or 22.8% of the stakes virtual), the third casino games that have attracted 15.8% of the games by Internet (1.55 billion). Online sports betting has generated over $ 1.1 billion (11, 4% of the total), bingo has added another 1.8% (183 million). The other games are worth just 120 million (the 1, 2% of total).
The incidence of the collection of online games on the overall collection of games with cash prizes (online + offline), amounted to over 12% in 2011. But if we look at the spending, the online channel represents only 4% of the total expenditure of the Italians for the game. This penetration is the result of very different weights by region: the center and south of the penetration rate is over 20% while in the north (where the population has increased in absolute terms) is equal to 13%.
In 2012, then the game online may also arrive on smartphones and tablet. They surveyed a total of 19 of the App (on average almost two per operator), all downloadable for free, of which 17 are produced in the IOS version for iPhone, Android and 7 to 5 in the version of IOS for the iPad. A third application allows recording directly from the game service platform and mobile applications, about half are real money (ie let you play with money). Of the 10 sites surveyed movable type, permitting the recording of 6 and 9 allow players to play money online. The smartphone market share, measured as a percentage of spending from the Italian players generated on this channel, is today still marginal and evaluated in the neighborhood of 1%, but one that could potentially grow more.
