Covid has certainly had a strong impact on the world of gambling, transforming gambling for a long time into an exclusively online entertainment. For this reason, thanks to the data provided by the Nomisma Observatory, we want to tell you how the statistics regarding the game have changed from 2019 to today.
Another important factor of analysis will be to verify the amount of gambling in the various regions, in order to understand which are the areas in which the game with winnings in money becomes the protagonist. We start our analysis with 2020, the year most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this year, gambling recorded a business volume of 88.38 billion euros, with a decrease of 17.3 percent compared to 2018. If it is a very consistent figure, it is compared to the game volume of 2007 it shows a good 108 percent more. Of the 88.38 billion euros, 75.36 billion were also won, with a net loss of 13.02 billion.
The main source of spending in gambling is represented by card games (such as poker, blackjack and similar, available on the CasinoHEX casino site) with an amount equal to 37.5 billion. Subsequently, we find the slot machine and the VLT that brought almost 19 billion in spending (18.97), followed by sports or horse betting (11.34). Chiudono this classifies the lottery and scratch card (8.17 billion), the lotto (6.41), the virtual betting (3.81 billion), and numerical totalizer games (1.26 billion) and, finally, the Bingo (0.92 billion).
As said in the opening, due to the pandemic the game was played to a greater extent – compared to the previous years – at a distance, with an increase of 27 percent in total. In other words, the growth of remote gaming has led online gambling to reach and surpass the physical network, reaching 56 percent versus 44 percent physically.
Let’s see now which are the regions that have seen the money game grow more in Italy. As expected, given the population of the region, Lombardy was the region in which the physical network collected the most, with an amount equal to 7.204 billion euros out of a total of 39.1. In second position we find Campania which has recorded a total expenditure of 4.349 billion euros, slightly surpassing Lazio which stood at 3.902 billion. In fourth position, instead, Emilia-Romagna is classified with an expenditure of 3.058 billion.
In Italy, the average amount of games is 31.6 euros for men and 22.9 euros for women: for both, the age group that spends the most is that between 25 and 34 years old.
Comparing now with 2019, the role played by online gambling in 2020 is even more evident. In fact, the overall physical collection was 74.1 billion euros, compared to 39.1 in 2020. If it is a Abyss also compares between the various regions already mentioned. In fact, in 2019 and 2018 Lombardy alone had exceeded 14 billion euros, double the amount recorded in 2020. In the same way, Campania also had a much higher gaming volume, well over 7 billion both in 2019 and 2018. It goes without saying that Lazio and Emilia-Romagna also recorded higher annual expenses in the 2018 and 2019 biennium. Lazio, in fact, had recorded an expenditure of 7.6 billion in 2019 and 7.8 billion in 2018. Likewise, Emilia-Romagna, today standing at just over 3 billion euros, in the 2018-2019 biennium had fatto register an expenditure between 6 and 6.2 billion annually.
All this without forgetting that even in 2019, online gambling already accounts for a third of total revenue (33 percent), a figure that is always on the rise since 2016. We can therefore affirm that online gambling, complicit in the Covid-19 pandemic, si stato di grado di stituirsi al physico gioco o presenza, riucsendo comunque a mantener invariato il volume di gioco totale.
Certainly, this new game modality prevents a territorial analysis of expenses but, at the same time, it manages to provide even more complete data on the habits of Italian players.
