Illegal gambling in Italy rocketed during pandemic, report suggests
A report commissioned by Lottomatica claims illegal gambling rose by over 50 per cent during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Italy.- A new report suggests that illegal gambling in Italy soared during the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw regulated land-based gambling subject to long lockdowns. The Lottomatica-commissioned report, which has been presented to the Italian Senate, estimates that illegal gambling in Italy was worth €18bn in 2020, up from €12bn in 2019.
Lottomatica warned that illegal gambling could become a €20bn market by the end of this year. Meanwhile, Italy’s legal gambling industry saw its handle fall by €22.2bn. Player winnings fell by €15.7bn, tax collection by €4.1bn and operator revenue by €2.3bn.
That’s despite a €12.8bn increase in online gaming revenue since the hard-hit land-based gaming sector saw revenue fall by €35bn.
Senator Mauro Maria Marino, president of the Parliamentary Commission for Inquiry into Illegal Gaming, said the report showed Italy needed to review its gambling regulations.
He said: “We need to focus on the quality of regulation and standardise sector legislation at the national level to overcome the overlap of many rules that conflict with each other.
“In this sense, there are some aspects to confront in order to bring about a real reform of the sector – in particular the issues of online gaming, illegal gambling, and the overall size of the gambling sector which was greatly affected by closures during Covid.”
Paola Severino, professor of Criminal Law at Luiss Guido Carli University, said: “The Lottomatica-Censis Report offers important data and eliminates many prejudices on an issue that concerns more the cultural than the legal sphere.
“Regulating gambling effectively means taking large slices of the market from the mafias and crime. Our country must increasingly strengthen the partnership between public supervisory authorities and legitimate operators in the system in order to quickly identify illicit money flows and effectively counter the entry of capital and criminal interests into the legal economy.”
Enforcement action against illegal gambling in Italy
Italian authorities have increased enforcement action against illegal gambling in recent months. Between January 2020 and April 2021, one illegal gambling room was detected every three days, 145 police investigations were carried out and 1,000 people were reported to police (up from 493 in 2019).
Yesterday (Thursday, November 18), Italian police arrested 12 people in connection with a probe into alleged illegal online betting in Sicily. The operation is reported to have involved Maltese betting sites which did not have a licence to operate in Italy. Arrests were made in the provinces of Palermo, Ragusa, Messina, Agrigento and Trapani. Five of those arrested faced charges of connections to Cosa Nostra.
Meanwhile, Italy’s undersecretary for the economy with responsibility for gaming, Federico Freni, has outlined plans to bring a delegated law for the reorganisation of gaming to the Council of Ministers and parliament this month.
The Lottomatica-commissioned report also highlighted the lack of a coordinated state effort on gambling addiction and suggested prioritising the creation of an integrated support network.
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