Italy’s online gamblers were preoccupied with ping-pong during their pandemic lockdown, according to a local operator.

New data issued by Italian gaming operator Lottomatica’s so-called Lottomatica Betting Observatory showed that table tennis accounted for over half (52%) of wagers made on Lottomatica.it during the COVID-19 shutdown of Italian retail operations. Ping-pong, led by the Liga Pro and Setka Cup, claimed five of the lockdown’s top-10 betting markets.

Despite the shutdown of Serie A, the English Premier League, Bundesliga et al, football still claimed a 34% share of lockdown betting, thanks mainly to those asymptomatic all-stars in the Belarusian Premier League. Volleyball was well back in third place with 5%, narrowly beating out tennis and basketball (4% each), while all other sports combined for just a 1% slice of the pandemic pie.

In demographic terms, the lockdown punter was overwhelmingly male (90%) and neatly split between the 25-40 age demo (42%) and those aged 40-55 (41%). Sadly for anti-gambling types, the lockdown proved not to be a great spoiler of youth, as those in the 18-25 age group accounted for just 6% of pandemic wagering, around half the 11% claimed by those in the 55+ demo.