Flutter To Close Betfair Exchange, Sportsbook And Casino In Italy

Flutter has not said when Italian customers will lose access. 

Neither outlet found a customer notice on a Flutter or Betfair website setting out a closure date or explaining how open bets and account balances will be handled. 

That leaves a gap between the corporate decision and what players will see.

Flutter also did not say which specific regulatory change rendered the exchange unviable, or what obligations or costs were involved. 

The statement points to the regulatory environment in general rather than to one rule.

SectorWire noted that Italy's regulator, the Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli (ADM), still lists Betfair Italia on its register of authorised remote gambling operators and online casinos. 

A register entry does not show a future switch-off date, so it cannot be read as confirmation either way.

Betfair told its commercial partners that its Italian affiliate programme ends on October 31, 2026. 

Affiliates were asked to remove promotional content aimed at Italian users by October 29, and commission earned in October is due to be processed and paid in November as the final payment cycle.

According to the reports, the notice applies only to Italy. Affiliates working Betfair in other markets keep their existing agreements, while Italy-only arrangements end with that last payment.

Both outlets stressed that the October 31 date refers to the affiliate programme and does not necessarily align with the date Betfair stops accepting bets. 

The letter itself was not publicly available, so the dates come from the outlets' reporting rather than from a published Betfair document.

Italy's online market is being rebuilt under Legislative Decree 41 of March 25, 2024. 

Remote gambling concessions run for up to nine years, carry a one-off fee of €7 million and are capped at five concessions for any single corporate group. The law keeps earlier game-specific rules in force until replacement regulations take effect.

Fixed-odds betting with direct interaction between players, the model behind a betting exchange, is one of the categories the reform regulates. 

ADM published version 3.0 of the communication protocol for player-to-player betting in August 2026, then a protocol document dated September 2, 2026, so the technical rules for exchange-style betting are still being finalised.

In an exchange, customers bet against each other rather than against a bookmaker. The platform matches offers and takes a commission on net winnings, so the product depends on enough active users to match bets at the odds people want. 

Any rule that raises operating costs or limits the pool of players can therefore hit an exchange harder than a conventional sportsbook.

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Flutter's other Italian brands stay open: Sisal, Snaitech's Snai and PokerStars all continue to operate. 

The company said they are unaffected, and that Betfair's Italian activity is small next to theirs.

Next steps to watch are a customer-facing closure notice from Betfair and any guidance from ADM on how balances and unsettled bets will be returned. 

Until then, Italian customers with open Betfair accounts have no published timetable from the operator.