Executive summary
Executive summary
A populist turn rose 5% to 25%. These changes came as part of
The extent to which the gambling sector is the Italian government’s Christmas Eve tax raid,
susceptible to interference from the political which it hopes will raise a further €770m from the
sphere is highlighted by events in two of the gambling sector in the next fiscal year.
countries we cover in this edition of Market
Monitor, Italy and Poland.
Most obviously in Italy, the gambling sector has
Most of the burden of these rises falls on the
land-based sector, but the fear is that should the
government fall short in terms of tax revenues,
felt the effects of the winds of political change. it will look elsewhere in the sector to make up
Within the past year the coalition government has the shortfall. Yet whether the populist coalition
hit the sector with a genuine double whammy of government will be in the mood to listen to the
a wholehearted ban on advertising and marketing gambling industry’s howls of protest at that point
and most recently tax increases across both land- is very much open to question.
based and online.
The potential for the political backdrop in
Poles apart
any given market to swing so markedly forces Not quite as dramatic, but still suffering from a
operators to re-assess their prospects across all degree of populist fervour, is the gaming sector in
regulated markets. In Italy it means taking stock Poland, where the government is most concerned
against what would otherwise be viewed as a about the proliferation of illegal gaming machines.
positive backdrop as the country remains one However, the controlling instinct of the ruling
of the most mature and significant regulated right-wing Law and Justice party permeates into
markets in Europe. the online world, where operators are confined
According to the latest data for 2018, the Italian
online market remains buoyant in terms of gross
gaming revenue (GGR), which for the online
in terms of product to sports betting and at a
punitive rate of 12% of turnover.
The latest news from Poland suggests that it is
sector rose to €1.53bn across all products, up unlikely the situation will change any time soon.
from €1bn in 2017. As of the end of December, the national lottery
But the ability to market freely is one of the
monopoly Totalizator Sportowy, which has been
trade-offs for entering the regulated space in the handed a monopoly on online gaming as well,
first place. How the ad ban sits with this makes finally launched its new offering totalcasino.pl in
Italy something of a test case and all eyes will partnership with Playtech.
be on how the regulated operators respond to
The suggestion from market watchers is that
the total ban this year and what – if anything – should the partnership fail to dent the sizeable
happens to the black market. offshore market, then the government might
The other hit came in the form of raised taxes,
which came into force at the beginning of this
year. In the online space sports betting rose
2% to 24% and online casino, poker and bingo
iGaming Business Market Monitor • February 2019
rethink its strategy. However, no one is holding
their breath.
Despite the restrictions, the market is
performing relatively well. According to the most
2