Hi, my name’s Roberto Primi and I am the Brightshare Affiliate Manager for the Italian market.

I’ve done some research on Italian forums to see the preferences of Italian players hoping that this research can help affiliates to focus on specific marketing strategies to increase their market share in Italy.

This is where Italian Players love to gamble:

• Slot Machines: Land based casinos (there are just a few in Italy) offer a wide choice of Slots, while tons of VideoSlots and VideoPoker are very popular all over the country in pubs. The wide exposure to these VideoSlots led to a big media coverage of the gambling phenomena, which resulted in a general scepticism regarding machine gambling. These VideoSlots have a very low payout percentage - around 75% - but people unaware of the possibility of a more fair game offered by online casinos, keep playing these easy accessible VideoSlots, losing a lot of money.
  
  I think Slots-focused promotions could be really attractive for Italian players.
  
  
• Roulette: Traditionally, in land-based casinos, roulette is the most played games (the European version) and the first choice for players who don’t like slots. The opportunity of having a Roulette wheel just a few clicks away attracts the players, since, as I said, just a few land-based casinos are available in Italy. The important thing is to focus on reassuring the players on the fairness of the game. Live Roulette when available in Online casinos is a very popular choice by Italian Players

• Scratch Card: This kind of game is fairly popular in Italy since any Pub sells scratch cards. Easy to play and thrilling, it’s a kind of game that I think could work well in online casinos if adequately promoted.

• Lottery: in Italy, Lotteries are organized by the State and are the most popular form of gambling in Italy. The most popular of all is Superenalotto: simply guess the exact 6 numbers that are going to be extracted in a pool of 90 and you win the Jackpot. That easy - this Jackpot is pretty hard to win, so it is not uncommon to see the jackpot going up to 10Million€. It's also not uncommon to hear about players who lost fortunes playing the same numbers every week. Basically Italian players search for the ultimate Win - the one that can really change their life.

As I said, media exposure is not helping gambling in Italy in general. To this we must add a confusion of regulation for online casino gambling in Italy (in Europe altogether) and the incorrect belief that online gambling doesn’t provide a fair gambling opportunity.

When online casino gambling will be finally accepted as a form of entertainment and properly regulated, the pool of potential players will grow enormously in Italy.

Any comments or suggestions are very welcome. Feel free to contact me anytime at robertop@brightshare.com

Ciao!