A million players active, with 1.34 million online casino accounts and a total turnover of 3.7 billion.
ROME - The 2009 of the gaming market in Italy aims to end with a collection of over 52 billion euros, a figure that also benefits from the boom that has seen online in recent months. According to the survey Doxa and Human Highway, which was held last spring on a sample of 4,000 individuals in the Italian population, and 2,000 Internet users, would engage the millions of online players, one million of them active-money players, with 1.34 million accounts of the game (since there are those who bet with more players, because players have at least one gaming account are 750mila) and a total turnover of 3.7 billion.
The survey shows that the online player is typically male and aged between 25 and 34 years. The lion’s share, at least with respect to network games, makes the poker, the big surprise and revolution of the online gaming market last year, with a rate of 65% of the total electronic market and a performance that makes incredible growth rates (probably a +879% between 2008 and 2009, +400% in the last quarter of the last two years), while deposits in the more mature online gaming grows “only” 6% (sports betting and horse) or even arrears (Instant Lotteries). Two million online players can be added 620mila players “dormant” and individuals who claim to be “prospects” of online gaming. Summing all the segments, the number of people affected or in close proximity to the phenomenon of online gambling in Italy is 3.3 million.
Last year, the type of game has become the most popular online poker, with 1.3 million players, by subtracting the primacy of the 2008 sports betting. Latter in 2009 involved approximately 800 thousand active players. Below are snapshots Lotteries (250 thousand), the game in online casinos (60 thousand) and Bingo players (too few to be adequately sized). Among the only players with money, the segment of sports betting becomes the largest with 650 thousand active players, followed by poker 520mila. The two segments are largely disjoint and constitute two different and complementary basins of the online gaming market: two online betting on sports betting play only three, two-thirds of the poker players only play poker online. The segment of the Instant lottery, however, is eighty per cent overlapped with the two major types of game, especially with sports betting.
