Italian Sports Betting Revenue Hits Record High in February

The iGaming market of Italy has experienced its second-best month ever in February 2021.

According to figures supplied by Ficom Leisure, revenue across all online verticals ticked up 4.6% from January to €351.2m, just behind the record set in December 2020. Compared to February 2020 – the last month before Italy went into lockdown – revenue was up 94.8%.

That month-on-month revenue growth was due mostly to a significant increase in sports betting revenue to a record high of €185.5m, as betting made up more than half of Italy’s total online revenue.

The closure of all retail betting shops across the country played a large role in this growth, but online betting revenue was also up 29.4% from January, which also had no retail betting.

Bet365, PlanetWin365, Snai, Eurobet, Goldbet and Sisal remained the six largest operators with more than 10% of the online betting market each, but there was significant change within that group. Goldbet became the market leader again, after holding that spot in December, with Sisal and Snai following, while Bet365 dropped from third to sixth.

Even without any revenue from the retail sector, overall sports betting revenue was level with February 2020, as the vertical recorded its second-best month since the first lockdown began, behind October 2020.

Turning to online casinos, revenue was down 12.3% month-on-month but up 83.1% year-on-year to €143.0m. While in absolute terms this was the third-best month ever for online casinos in Italy, the vertical had its lowest share of revenue since December 2017 at 40.7%.

PokerStars remained the top operator, though its share of revenue fell to 10.4%, while Sisal closed the gap as its market share grew to 9.5%. Snai, 888 and Lottomatica followed with more than 7.5% of revenue each.