- Updated:
- Published:
Italy’s iGaming market kept growing after the field was cut
Italy still prints the largest Italy iGaming CEB in continental Europe. The 2025 concession rewrite removed the spare brands. The 2026 question is whether that thinner field stays onshore.
The market is bigger, but there’s a few brands here
For January–August 2026 Blask’s Competitive Earning Baseline for Italy is $4.42B ($3.25B–$7.94B range), 10.2% above the same eight months of 2025.
In the same window Germany is $1.68B, France $2.03B and the Netherlands $2.16B. The UK remains larger ($7.89B). Italy is the continental scale market, not a mid-tier peer of Spain.
💡 Key point: Italy’s Jan–Aug 2026 CEB is $4.42B — up 10.2% vs 2025 — while Germany, France and the Netherlands sit between $1.68B and $2.16B in the same window.
The CEB panel counted 102 brands in January 2026 and 104 in August. That is a stable commercial set after the late-2025 reset, not another collapse.
Demand for the eight months, measured as the sum of monthly Blask Index, is 18% above January–August 2025. Revenue baseline and demand both rose. The extra names did not come back.
About 61 million people live in Italy; Blask’s GEO file counts 53 million internet users. The digital base was never the constraint. Capital and a licence were.
📚 Read more: What APS and CEB mean in iGaming
Regulation: 13 November 2025 still governs 2026
The Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli ran online gambling onto a new concession frame that went live on 13 November 2025: nine-year, non-renewable concessions, a €7 million fee, and a cap that compressed the market toward 52 licences.
Secondary “skin” domains under a parent licence were the model that frame was built to end.
Blask’s February 2026 version of this page recorded the immediate effect: active names in the data falling sharply into December, with Unibet, Betway and 1xBet among the exits.
Eight months later the CEB panel has not refilled. What has moved is the onshore/offshore split, not the headcount.
📚 Read more: Italy’s iGaming market keeps growing, but the field has narrowed
Market dynamics: a flat CEB year on a higher base
Winter–spring (January–April)
Monthly CEB sat in a narrow band from $534M to $559M. Brand count on the panel did not move.
Early summer (May–July)
Blask Index, in relative terms, softened into the summer hollow that the seasonality piece already described as Italy’s off-calendar. CEB barely noticed.
📚 Read more: Italy’s €21.5bn market runs on football time — and the data proves it
August
Index recovered from July. CEB stayed on the same plateau. 2026 is not a boom year. It is a high, licensed run-rate.
Competitive landscape: Sisal leads the period; Winnita is the 2026 move
For January–August 2026 the BAP ranking is still an Italian-group list with one global name in the top five:
| Rank | Brand | BAP |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sisal | 11.9% |
| 2 | BetFlag | 10.9% |
| 3 | GoldBet | 9.9% |
| 4 | Bet365 | 9.2% |
| 5 | Lottomatica | 7.7% |
The top three hold 32.6% of demand. The top ten hold 71.5%. That is the same oligopoly shape the 2025 close already showed, now measured on a post-concession field.
The eight-month path is less frozen than the ranking. Winnita rose from 3.7% BAP in January to 7.5% in August (+3.8 pp). Bet365 fell from 10.9% to 7.6% (−3.3 pp).
bwin and Betfair added more than a point each from a low base. Eurobet and GoldBet slipped. Concentration at the top ten held; the names inside that ten did not.
The twist: offshore demand share crept back
Onshore brands held 98.6% of Italian BAP in January 2026. By August that share was 92.0%. Offshore BAP went from 1.4% to 8.0%.
💡 Key point: Onshore BAP fell from 98.6% in January to 92.0% in August — the first clear 2026 leak after a reset sold as a closed shop.
That is the opposite of the 2019–2025 story, when Blask had offshore demand compressing toward a residual. The concession cut removed licensed skins. It did not remove the audience that used to sit on those skins. Some of that demand is now printing as offshore.
The market is still overwhelmingly onshore. An 8% offshore slice in August is not a grey-market takeover. It is the first clear 2026 leak in a reset that was sold as a closed shop.
📚 Read more: Italy illegal gambling data splits as offshore search demand falls
Bottom line
Italy in January–August 2026 is a $4.42B CEB market that grew 10% against 2025, with 104 brands on the panel and 71.5% of demand in ten names.
The concession reform did what it was designed to do to the licence list. It has not finished the job on demand: Winnita can still take four points in eight months, and offshore BAP is no longer a rounding error.
Whether 92% onshore is the floor is the open question for the rest of 2026.
