As reported by Italy’s leading gambling, betting, and gaming news agency AGIMEG (Agenzia Giornalistica sul Mercato del Gioco), spending within the online sports betting sector in Italy reached almost $1.2bln (€997.7 million) for the full year of 2020, an increase of approximately 37.5% over 2019 according to statistics provided by the Italian regulator "ADM". Despite the highly competitive market in Italy, Elys grew by 56% gaining market share while further strengthening its competitive position in the mobile and online channel.
Matteo Monteverdi, CEO of Elys, commented, "We continue to generate very strong year-over-year revenue growth in our foundational operations despite the impact of COVID-19. Moreover, our online gaming performance in Italy increased by 65% in 2020, and we believe that we have been able to navigate the current market far better than many of our peers. We credit this growth to our omni-channel distribution approach, which combines the best of both online and land-based retail betting. We believe this multi-faceted approach allows us to remain nimble as an organization and quickly adapt to evolving market conditions such as the current pandemic.
"Our goal is to not only establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading sports betting enterprises but, more importantly, aligning our product and service offerings to the needs of our B2B clients as well as B2C consumers in order to build a well-managed organization that is both highly profitable and sustainable. As a result, we believe we are extremely well positioned heading into to 2021, as we kick off our U.S. expansion strategy. In this regard, we anticipate a number of very meaningful near-term milestones and look forward to providing updates on our roll-out as developments unfold."