意大利AAMS发布新的赌博游戏在线玩市场统计(2)

　　译文：

　　ITALIAN AAMS RELEASES NEW ONLINE GAMBLING MARKET STATISTICS

　　The Italian online gambling regulator AAMS released new data according to which the Italian online gambling market increased with about 2% during 2012. However this was only achieved under the circumstances that during 2012 multiple new games including online slots were legalized.

　　The Italian e-gaming regulator AAMS revealed that in 2012 the Italian online gambling market increased with 2% compared to 2011. According to the AAMS, in 2012 the Italian online gambling market generated a total of €749.1 million.

　　However analysts believe that this statistic is misleading because in 2011 many of the currently legal online gaming types were not legal and operators had less revenue generating opportunities. For example, online poker cash games only became legal mid-2011 and didn't cover the full year.

　　The Italian online gambling market also received a big boost in December 2012 when the AAMS officially launched real money online slots. Data revealed by the AAMS pointed out that in December 2012 online casinos managed to achieve an increase in revenues of over 40% compared to the previous month, something clearly a consequence of legalized online slots.

　　Wouldn't it had been for online slots, in 2012 the Italian online gambling market would have probably performed much worse than in 2011. Even so, the increase of 2% is extremely small considering the fact that multiple casino games and product groups that operators were able to offer in 2012 were not yet legal in 2011.

　　Experts believe that the main cause for this slow growth is the decline of online poker due to faulty regulations. At this moment Italian online poker sites are forced to separate their Italian players from their international players. This in turn leads to under-populated tables and frustrated players who eventually either relocate to unlicensed poker sites or stop playing altogether.

　　Another online gaming branch that declined was fixed odds sports betting that finished the year with a 20% overall decline generating only €166.9 million in revenues. Industry experts argue that extremely high taxes determined many legitimate betting sites to either leave the country or offer substantially less attractive deals to players.

　　Probably due to the launch of online slots in December, the only market segment that managed to increase in 2012 was online casino gaming. Growth in online casino gaming was also fueled by the Italian expansion of major international operators such as William Hill, 888.com and bwin.party.