Flutter pulls Betfair out of Italy

• Flutter is withdrawing Betfair Exchange, Sportsbook and Casino from Italy.
• Sisal, Snai and PokerStars continue operating in the market.
• Betfair’s Italian affiliate programme ends on 31 October 2026.

Flutter Entertainment is withdrawing Betfair Exchange, Sportsbook and Casino from Italy, saying recent regulatory changes have made the exchange commercially unsustainable.

Sisal, Snai and PokerStars are not affected, and Flutter had not announced a closure date for customers at the time of writing.

Exchange goes first

Flutter confirmed the decision in a statement to trade media this week. The company points to the regulatory framework in general and does not name a specific rule.

According to Flutter, Betfair generates a very small share of its Italian revenue. The group’s other local brands and its staff in Italy will not be affected.

A Flutter spokesperson said:

“Recent regulatory changes in Italy have made the Betfair Exchange product no longer commercially sustainable. As a result, Flutter has also decided to soon discontinue the Betfair Sportsbook and Casino product in the Italian market. This represents a very small proportion of our revenue in Italy and will have no impact on our other brands or employees based in Italy.”

The statement makes the sequence clear. The exchange is the product that stopped working, and the sportsbook and casino close because of it.

Affiliates lose access

Affiliates are the first to feel the change. Italian gaming agency AGIMEG reported that Betfair will end its Italian affiliate programme on 31 October 2026.

Partners had until 29 October to remove promotional content targeting Italian players. October commissions, paid in November, will be the final payments. Betfair’s affiliate programmes in other markets continue unchanged.

The 31 October date applies to the affiliate programme only. It is not the closure date for player accounts, which Flutter has yet to confirm.

For Italian affiliates, this removes another operator from a market already reduced by the regulatory reset and its one domain per licence rule.

Ring-fenced from day one

Betfair’s Italian exchange never worked like its international product. It launched in April 2014 after discussions with the regulator, then called AAMS, and opened with a Serie A match.

Under the terms agreed with the regulator, the exchange used ring-fenced liquidity. Italian customers matched bets with each other, separately from Betfair’s global customer base.

Flutter is taking the opposite approach in the UK, where PokerStars poker moved onto the Betfair platform under a shared liquidity model.

An exchange needs enough customers on both sides of each market to function. With a closed national pool, every additional cost or restriction has a bigger impact than it would on a traditional sportsbook that sets its own odds.

Flutter has not said whether liquidity, licence fees or compliance requirements drove the decision. The exact cause remains unconfirmed.

The new concession model

Italy reformed its online gambling rules through Legislative Decree No. 41 in March 2024. Every concession now costs €7 million and runs for nine years, with a separate licence required for each brand.

The reform also introduced stricter player protection, compliance and platform requirements. Betting exchanges are regulated under the fixed-odds betting framework.

Flutter secured five concessions in September 2025, the maximum available to a single group. They came into force on 13 November 2025, when the new market went live. Flutter has not disclosed how the five are allocated across its Italian brands.

Race for top spot

Italy remains a core market for Flutter. The group completed its Snaitech acquisition in April 2025, saying at the time the deal would take its Italian online market share to around 30%.

Integration has moved fast. Flutter completed the migration of Snai customers to Sisal’s technology platform in April 2026. On the group’s Q2 earnings call, Peter Jackson, CEO at the time, said the migration caused a short-term drop in market share, followed by a 30% rise in active monthly players in June.

Competition at the top is close. Investment bank Jefferies placed Lottomatica at 30% of Italian online GGR in Q1 2026, with Sisal and Snai together at 27%. Lottomatica is also growing through its €2.8bn merger with Cirsa.

Cost pressure grows

The Italian decision comes during a difficult period for the wider group. Flutter reported a $296 million net loss for Q2 2026, compared with a $37 million profit a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA fell 45% to $508 million.

Flutter attributed the loss mainly to lower segment profitability and historical tax provisions. In August, it launched a second cost-reduction phase targeting $500 million in gross savings by 2029.

The group has since proposed up to 1,400 job cuts in its UK and Ireland business, affecting teams from Leeds to Cluj.

Dan Taylor became Group CEO on 1 October, replacing Jackson. The Italian exit is one of the first portfolio decisions made public under his leadership.

Open questions remain

The key outstanding points are a customer notice on account balances and open bets, and any ADM requirements governing the wind-down.

Betfair’s exit removes a betting exchange that has operated in Italy’s regulated market since 2014. Any operator considering a peer-to-peer product there faces the same equation: a closed national liquidity pool, a €7 million concession and fixed-odds compliance costs.

For Flutter, Italian performance now depends on two domestic brands with real scale. Whether Sisal and Snai can overtake Lottomatica will matter much more to its Italian results than Betfair ever did.