By legal, we mean "with approval", with license, with consent of the State. We talked about it in the last days: some big names in online poker doubt the profitability to operate a site when it is required to apply for a license in the State.
The case of the Italy should give hope to other countries. Poker online in Italy is the image of the poker online in France, i.e. it is necessary that operators have a license to operate legally.
When these licenses have been assigned, say that earnings of the poker rooms operating "legally" were modest. Might a fairly slow start say. However, from month to month, things are going better and better. For the first nine months of this year, the turnover of the poker online in Italy is estimated at 2.3 billion euros d. Not bad for a start. What inspire the other rooms that offer poker online to french players. The leader in Italy is the Microgame operator that controls 28% of the market.
We hope that the health of the poker online in Italy can give confidence to the French and the french market which serves as a model for respect of the licences issued to operators of online poker.
French operators can still hope to be profitable in the years to come. On the other hand, should be that amendments to the law (rate of levies, international tournaments) will be quickly. Unlike France, casino games are allowed in Italy. To do this, the operators must obtain a licence l set Amministrazione autonoma dei monopoli di Stato (AAMS), i.e., the authority for respect of the online game.
To better illustrate the growth of poker online in Italy, here is a little table that should give you a good idea. In just 1 month, operators of online poker found on average an increase of 11 per cent of their turnover:
