News earlier this week that the European Commission has approved the technical framework enabling Portugal to move forward on shared online poker player pool projects with France, Italy, Spain and the U.K. (see previous reports) has been followed by developments in Italy.
AssoPoker reports that the chief of the Italian regulator’s online gambling wing, Daria Petralia, revealed during an Italian online gambling conference Tuesday that player pool sharing has been the subject of ongoing discussions between interested nations, and that significant progress has been made.
Despite a buoyant performance in 2016 by other forms of Italian online gambling, with revenues topping a billion euros, Italian online poker continued to languish, with stakes down 10 percent at just Euro 133 million, and the hope is that shared player pools may provide a solution.
The problem is not unique to Italy, with other regulated European markets experiencing the online poker slowdown, which many attribute to the imposition of national ring-fenced markets.
Petralia said a detailed analysis and proposed Italian plan for pooling is to be considered at a meeting of nations in Brussels next month.