Italy loves to gamble
A social service group in Italy (CeIS) recently released a study into gambling prevalence and if it’s at all accurate then you Italians sure do love to gamble!
I haven’t read the study, but news outlets reporting its finding are saying that according to CeIS, Gambling is Italy’s 3rd largest industry! Forget tourism, fashion or cosmetics. Video poker and slots are now where it’s at…and it’s an industry growing fast. Mind you, those reports are also saying that gambling sits 3rd in terms of revenues behind energy giant Eni, and auto maker Fiat. These are companies not entire industries so it looks like apples are being compared with oranges.
Studies are typically skewed to suit the agenda of their creators (tobacco doesn’t cause cancer – just read all the studies commissioned by Philip Morris) and a study on gambling produced by an anti-gambling group may err on the side of overstating the numbers. Remembering also that this is an industry with significant grey and black markets which is therefore impossible to accurately quantify – the numbers are always going to be VERY rubbery.
Having said all this, if you take the numbers provided as gospel, they’re big! In 2008 gambling revenues were 47.5 billion euros. That’s only 10 billion euros less than Fiat Group revenues for the year. Since then revenues from gambling have grown substantially (23.2 billion euros in first 3 months of 2012). I suspect revenues at Fiat have not.
Online is still a tiny percentage of the overall gambling market…1.5 billion euros on 2011. But it is the fastest growing.
No wonder all the big online operators are rushing to get their Italian live dealer games up and running!
Related pages from Livedealer.org
- Il miglior Casinò con live dealer per i giocatori italiani
- 888 live casino now open to Italian players
- WilliamHill.it launces with live casino for Italian players
- Evolution Gaming Launches Ventuno Live Blackjack for Italian Players
- Unibet.it adds live dealers for Italy
- Playtech’s Italian speaking live dealers
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