Market Pulse: Italy. A window of opportunity for offshore?

Market Pulse: Italy. A window of opportunity for offshore?

Continental Europe's largest market, where the regulator cleaned up half the brands a few months ago and players are actively interested in offshore brands.

I am launching a new section - real-time geo monitoring. What is happening right now, where demand is moving and where opportunities for profit are opening up. The first issue is Italy.

Facts

Italy is the largest iGaming market in continental Europe according to Blask - 2 times bigger than Germany, 2.5 times bigger than France. Brief introductions on geo:

• Data regulator: €4.76bn GGR in 2025, +8% year-on-year. The market has tripled since 2019;
• November 2025 saw a regulatory sweep, with the number of active brands dropping from 180 to 99 in one month. Gone were Unibet, Betway, 1xBet and dozens of others;
• Since 2018, there has been a complete ban on gambling adverts - including media, sports, online.

Almost half of the operating brands left overnight, there is no legal advertising, and the demand has not gone anywhere. Let's look at where it could, in theory, go.

Search interest

Looking through Google Trends for search trends in Italy over the last year:

• “Online casino.” - The underlying demand for online casinos in Italy. All through 2025, steady interest. After the November sweep, a sharp increase, peaking in March 2026;
• “Nuovi casino online” (new online casinos) - an enquiry that didn't exist for most of 2025. After the November sweep, a vertical take-off;
• “Casino non AAMS.” (casino without an Italian licence) - rose by the end of 2025, then sagged and rose again by March.

Local gamblers are looking for replacements for brands that have left the market. Let's see which of the offshore operators have already started to fill the resulting window.

Who takes the traffic: the case of Winnita

Winnita - offshore in Curacao, went live in 2023. Fully customised for Italy: localisation in Italian, local payments.

We compare it to the three largest licensed brands in Italy. For almost all of 2025 Winnita was hanging around at the bottom. But at the beginning of 2026 there is a sharp rise: Winnita catches up with bet365 and Betflag. An offshore brand without an ADM licence is on par with operators that have been in the market for years.

The operator is investing aggressively in marketing amid interest from local players in new brands.

Conclusion

Demand for licensed brands (Sisal, bet365) has remained at the same level - their audience has not gone anywhere. But the players who sat on the brands that have gone away are now looking for new products. This can be seen in the explosive growth of «nuovi casino online» and «casino non AAMS» queries, and this is confirmed by the case of Winnita, an offshore company that is already competing with licensed operators in terms of search interest.

That's the window of opportunity: a €5bn market where half the brands have left in a month, there's no advertising, and the demand for new sites is growing every month.

In the next post, I'll break down the showcases of the top operators in IT - let's see which of the slots are converting right now.