Online casino revenue wasn’t able to keep pace with January’s record total, declining by 22.3% to €147.7m in February. However, this total was still up by 3.3% from February 2021.
The online casino market was more fragmented than ever, as market leader PokerStars’ share of revenue declined to just 8.67%. Sisal – which is soon to come under the same owner as PokerStars when its acquisition by Flutter closes – was in a close second, with an 8.57% share.
Only 0.13 percentage points separated PokerStars from the third-placed operator, Playtech-owned Snai, which held an 8.54% share.
Further behind, Lottomatica’s market share was 7.41% while for SKS365’s Planetwin365 brand, this figure was 5.94%.
Looking at sports betting, combined online and retail revenue dipped by 3.0% from January to €204.7m, but this was 10.3% more than February 2021’s total, when the retail sector was closed due to Covid-19 measures.
Looking just at online betting revenue, this declined more sharply, by 5.2% to €122.1m, the lowest figure since October 2021.
Snai held onto its lead as the largest online betting operator with a 13.8% market share ahead of Sisal’s 13.4%.
However, for the overall betting market, Snai slipped into second with a 15.6% share, just being pipped to the post by Goldbet with 15.7%.
Poker tournament revenue declined fairly steeply month-on-month, by 28.1% to €8.2m, though January’s figure had been the highest for a year. Year-on-year, February’s total represented a 12.8% decline.
Looking at cash games, revenue declined significantly again to to €5.6m. This was a 25.3% drop when compared to January or a 16.5% decline against February 2021.
Pokerstars continued to dominate among poker operators. While its share of tournament revenue dropped back below 50% in February, its revenue from that vertical was still more than five times that of second-place Sisal.
Similarly, Pokerstars’ share of the cash games market dipped slightly to 42.51% but this was well ahead of second-placed Goldbet’s 7.40% market share.
Bingo revenue was down 19.7% both month-on-month and year-on-year to €4.9m.
Ficom Leisure is a leading European corporate advisory firm specialising in all segments of the betting and gaming sector.
Ficom Leisure also provides exclusive monthly estimates on the Spanish online market in the Spain iGaming Dashboard, including operator market shares across casino, sports betting and poker. It also provides monthly estimates on several US states, including New Jersey in the New Jersey iGaming Dashboard, Pennsylvania in the Pennsylvania iGaming Dashboard and Iowa in the Iowa iGaming Dashboard.
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/ggr-declines-italy-february/
