Italian Gambling Legislation to change
A few months ago we brought you details of how the Italian government was looking at laws concerning online gaming. While the country has tried to keep a hold on government restricted gambling such as the Italian Lottery, the pressure has been on to allow online casino play from the country at some of the world’s best online casinos and now finally Italian gambling legislation is to change allowing even more online gambling in the country.
Italy was one of the first European countries to establish online casino games, but it wasn’t as simple as that: concerned about the loss of revenue from state run gambling activities such as the SuperEnalotto Italian Lottery, the Italian government did consider putting a stop on online gambling altogether.
Online gambling is a popular past time in Italy and that shows in the recent end of year revenues. Online casino revenue in Italy is up to €4.8 billion for the last twelve months, from €3.4 billion for the period before.
Now with online poker legislated back into the country and even more gambling opportunities and online casinos available to Italians, we are likely to see an even bigger increase in revenue, and possibly even more UK online casinos such as Ladbrokes Casino (full review) to start enticing more Italian customers. Cash poker games will begin in March across Italy and alone are expected to generate revenues of €400 million by the end of 2011 and the new online casinos in the country could take this total up to the €1 billion mark!
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