Italy's gambling market reached a new all-time high in 2025. The amount wagered exceeded 165 billion euros — 165.34 billion, up 5% from 2024 — equivalent to 7.3% of GDP and to 85% of Italian households' spending on food and beverages.
Net of winnings, players lost 21.88 billion euros in total, the highest figure in Europe both per capita and relative to the country's wealth. Every adult spent 3,284 euros on average during the year, with peaks in southern Italy: per-capita spending reached 6,307 euros in Isernia and 7,715 euros in Patti, in the province of Messina, in the online channel alone.
The figures show that gambling is now a major economic sector, able to generate more than 11 billion euros in tax revenue for the state in 2025 alone: 11.47 billion, roughly 1.7% of total tax receipts, according to the first report on the public gaming sector submitted by the Ministry of Economy to Parliament.
Yet while the amount wagered keeps growing, the share that ends up in public coffers has steadily shrunk, from 19.4% of the total take in 2006 to 6.9% in 2025. The main driver of this change is the rapid expansion of online gambling.
For the first time, remote gaming collection exceeded 100 billion euros: 100.88 billion, up 9.5% from 2024 and 221% from 2018, with about 4.8 million active players. Digital now accounts for roughly 60% of the total, against 64.5 billion for physical venues, down 1.3%.
Remote games offer higher average payouts and, in most cases, are taxed on the margin rather than on the full amount staked. Online skill games — poker, virtual casinos and card games — alone account for 81.2 billion in collection, nearly half of the entire market, but yield only about 1.1% for the state. As a result, higher wagering volumes no longer translate into proportionally higher tax revenue: in 2025, tax receipts actually fell 0.74% year on year.
There is also greater exposure to illegal supply, favoured by the ease with which unauthorized websites can be set up: in 2025 the Customs and Monopolies Agency blocked 1,038 unlicensed sites, 111% more than in 2023.
The phenomenon opens a debate on the state's role, caught between two objectives that are difficult to reconcile. On the one hand, the public monopoly on gambling keeps illegal circuits in check and provides an important source of tax revenue. On the other, gambling generates significant economic and social costs, hitting the most fragile segments of the population hardest: losses amount to 2% of Italians' total income on average, but the share rises to 4% for those with fewer resources.
Even though tax revenue exceeds 11 billion euros a year, the resources earmarked for preventing and treating gambling disorder amount to just over 32 million euros — 32.2 million, less than 0.3% of what the state collects from the sector. A delicate balance, set to become even more complex as online gambling keeps growing.
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