Gambling in Italy is not slowing down. According to official data from the Ministry of Economy, in 2025 we reached 165 billion and 345 million euros, almost 8 billion more than in 2024. We have thus reached a per capita spending on gambling of 2.700 euros per person, and now the sector that is growing the most (and also the one where controls are the most difficult) is online gambling, which has now reached 100 billion in bets per year.
Faced with a country of gamblers, it has always been said that the state cannot enforce severe measures, as in the case of smoking, through targeted campaigns, gambling bans in a number of locations, and high cigarette taxes. It cannot because it collects too much money, which is needed to fund a country heavily indebted and with very high public spending.
But are we really sure the state is collecting what it's owed? And isn't there a suspicion that the government has succumbed to pressure from the powerful lobby of gambling companies rather than to its own needs? The answers to these questions come from reading the Ministry of Economy's own data, and there's no shortage of evidence of waste.
The first irrefutable fact: despite such a sharp increase in gambling, state revenues are decreasing and are no more than 1,45 percent. The second fact: the explanation for this loss to the public coffers, while private individuals are gaining even more, lies precisely in the shift in gambling sources, from land-based to online. In the former case, taxation, for example on slot machines, starts at 20 percent and can reach up to 53,6 percent for SuperEnalotto bets. In the latter case, online betting, the percentage collected by the state becomes ridiculous, plummeting to around 1 percent.
In a very well documented book ( "The Italian model of gambling taxation" , the economists Alessandro Gandolfo e Valeria De Bonis They highlight a very precise conclusion and the paradox of gambling in Italy: the sector is growing, but state revenue is decreasing. This is primarily because traditional gambling is taxed on the proceeds, while online gambling is taxed on the margin, and therefore, as we've seen, the rates are much lower. Over the last 25 years, to gauge the extent of this waste, overall revenue has fallen from an average of 12 percent in 2000 to an average of 6 percent in 2025. Virtually halved. In 2006, to cite just one year in this trend, taxation for everyone hovered around 12,6 percent.
It wouldn't take much to fix this absurd fiscal inconsistency, by rebalancing taxation and taking note of the shift in the weights of gambling sources: this, According to experts, it would mean guaranteeing the state between 6 and 13 billion euros in new revenue each year. Money we are currently wasting.
Finally, there are two other considerations to complete the picture of a state so compliant with gambling. The disproportion between taxation on betting and that on another very harmful vice, smoking, is enormous. Compared to the revenues we've seen from gambling, for a single pack of cigarettes the state collects (between excise duties and VAT) about €4,5-€5, equal to 75-80 percent of the cost. Why should an online bet be practically tax-free?
To the loss of profits (decreased betting revenue), this state, so compliant with the lobbying of gambling companies, must add the resulting damage, namely the costs borne by the National Health Service (NHS), which covers the treatment of 1 million gamblers considered "problem." Adding direct healthcare costs to the social costs of "problem" gamblers, the state's expenditure amounts to approximately €3 billion. More money that only increases, while tax revenues continue to decline.
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