Italy Counts on €807m Gambling Tax Windfall — First-Quarter Numbers Say Otherwise

Key Points

• Italy’s Agenzia delle Entrate has lifted its 2026 gambling income estimate by €807m, pointing to the overhauled online licensing system and the GGR rate adjustments baked into the 2025 Budget Law.
• Between January and April 2026, gambling tax receipts dropped 7.8% against the prior year, pulled down by shrinking gaming machine income and a sharp reduction in sports betting concessions during the transition period.
• Prime Minister Meloni has set an end-of-August deadline for both MEF Deputy Minister Maurizio Leo and Sports Minister Andrea Abodi to push through the land-based reorganisation decree and the long-stalled gambling advertising bill.

Italy’s Tax Office Is Counting on €807m From Gambling — Markets Are Not So Sure

Italy’s Agenzia delle Entrate (ADE) has sealed its 2025 State Budget accounts, and the verdict for gambling is generous. The sector received a formal “favourable opinion” as the country sets its sights on 2026.

The centrepiece is a projected €807m boost in gambling-related receipts, grounded in structural shifts across both the online market and the tax rates governing key verticals. Non-lottery gambling licences generated €6.66bn in taxes and duties through 2025, a figure equal to roughly 1% of Italy’s total tax income of €668bn. Concessions from lotteries, instant win games, and gambling machines accounted for €22.28 billion for the Ministry of Finance (MEF), dedicated to cultural, civic, and sports activities. However, what cannot be concealed by these impressive figures is the fact that early 2026 data goes against the prediction.

Behind the €807m Revision: Two Structural Bets

The Agenzia delle Entrate does not revise figures upward on sentiment alone. Two concrete structural developments sit behind the 2026 forecast adjustment.

The licensing process for Italy was launched online in November 2025. ADM granted 52 licenses to 46 operators, reducing an industry which once consisted of hundreds of sub-brands down to a limited number of single domain licenses. As iGaming Business reported in December 2025, the reform compressed over 400 operating domains into those 52 licences, each tied to a single brand. Every concession now carries a €7m entry fee, split across two instalments, plus an annual charge of 3% of net gaming revenue. Those licences alone are projected to contribute €365m to the 2026 budget, according to ADE estimates.

The second driver is tax. GGR rate increases were locked into the Budget Law of 2025 across most verticals. Online sports and virtual betting moved from 24% to 24.5%; online casino, poker and bingo from 25% to 25.5%. Retail sports betting edged from 20% to 20.5%, while virtual betting in retail venues climbed more steeply, from 22% to 24.5%. Taken together, the tax office expects those adjustments to produce over €500m in additional annual revenue.

That arithmetic did not go unchallenged. Logico, Italy’s gambling trade body, warned when the Budget Law changes were signed that the combined weight of the €7m licence fee and the new tax rates might discourage operators from entering the new concession system. Moreno Marasco, President of Logico, stated: “The risk is weakening a sector that is the only bulwark against illegal gambling.”

What the First-Quarter Data Actually Shows?

Placed next to ADE’s confident budget revision, the January-to-April 2026 gambling tax figures read very differently.

Gambling tax receipts across those four months totalled €2.52bn, down 7.8% against the same period in 2025. ADE points to two culprits: the continuing drag from land-based gaming machines and the sharp reduction in sports betting concessions that occurred as the sector moved between regulatory regimes.

According to statistics given by the Ministry of Economy and Finance in Focus Gaming News, gambling taxes in the country had fallen 12.4 percent from the same period last year, while machine income fell 15.2 percent to €800 million for January. The Italian expert magazine Jamma looks at things in their proper context; machine income was €978 million in early 2024, fell to €943 million in 2025 and now stands at €800 million in 2026.

Context from across Europe sharpens the concern. A September 2025 study covering six European gambling markets noted that higher tax rates do not mechanically translate into higher receipts, with the Netherlands witnessing a sharp GGR decline after its own rate increases took effect. Italy’s retail picture follows the same pattern. CGIA-As.Tro data published in November 2025 confirmed that slot machine and VLT revenues sat 30% below 2019 levels, with the retail network shedding 16,000 machines and 8,400 venues over five years. Recovery is not visible in that trajectory.

The Land-Based Decree Still Lacks a Final Signature

ADE’s bullish projection rests, in part, on legislation that has not been enacted.

Italy’s retail gambling sector is still operating under a patchwork of transitional concessions while the Reorganisation of Land-Based Gambling Decree works through its final stages. MEF Deputy Minister Maurizio Leo has carried out the negotiations between the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Conferenza Unificata, the body representing Italy’s 20 regions and 110 municipalities.

At ADM’s First National Anti-Fraud Conference in April 2026, Leo confirmed the decree would reach the Council of Ministers “within ten days”, framing the reform as extending well beyond fiscal goals and calling it “a combined tax, public order and anti-crime measure.” The connection he drew was direct: every month the concession framework sits unresolved, Italy’s unlicensed gambling market, estimated at between €30bn and €35bn, gains ground.

The commercial terms are largely settled. Gaming machine lots carry a minimum bid of €25m per package. Retail betting licences are grouped in blocks of 25 at €60,000 each, while bingo concessions open at €350,000 per venue. Regional authorities have accepted an initial €80m revenue-sharing allocation under the 2026 Budget Law; the unresolved piece is compensation for regions holding existing concession agreements that the new framework displaces. Hard as that is to solve, the clock imposes a harder constraint. The decree must pass through the fiscal delegation process by 29 August. Miss that date and new tenders cannot be called, locking the sector into further concession extensions past 31 December 2026.

Football’s Money, an Advertising Ban and a Government on a Deadline

Running parallel to the land-based reform is the push to repeal the 2018 Dignity Decree’s total ban on gambling advertising. Sports Minister Andrea Abodi is steering the legislation, and the stakes are significant; sports and media stakeholders argue the ban has stripped Italian football and its broadcasters of up to €1bn in lost commercial income since it came into force.

The dilemma in Italian football has heightened the political imperative. The inability of the Azzurri to make it to the FIFA World Cup 2026 for the third time running forced the Italian Senate to undertake an investigation into the organization and funding of the game in April 2026. The idea of taxing football gambling income by 2% is the key subject of these discussions.

Giovanni Malagò, elected FIGC President in June 2026, has endorsed the levy. Abodi put the case to the Senate in structural terms: “In other countries, betting is a factor in promoting competition… Everyone is leaning towards the right to bet, on sharing the proceeds from sports betting as a reward for the organiser of an event.” Player protection, he stressed, must travel alongside any liberalisation: “One way to combat [gambling harm] is to work on the traceability of bettors, limit betting, and thus provide support to state concessionaires.”

Neither the advertising reform nor the football levy has been finalised. Abodi’s negotiations with Serie A and the Olympic Committee of CONI over revenue allocation are ongoing. Meloni’s position is unambiguous: both bills must land before the end of August, in time to be included in the 2026 Budget and ahead of Italy’s 2027 election cycle.

Expert Analysis

Italy’s tax office has done what fiscal institutions are built to do: project forward from the best numbers currently in hand. The €807m upward revision is defensible on paper. The 52 new online concessions create a predictable income base, and concentrating the market among fewer, better-capitalised operators should tighten revenue collection. The GGR increases are marginal enough not to trigger the channelisation exodus seen in markets like Germany or the Netherlands, where steeper rates drove players to unlicensed alternatives.

The land-based picture is harder to explain away. Machine revenue has been falling for three consecutive years, and the retail network is smaller today than at any point since before the COVID-19 pandemic. That structural contraction does not reverse because a decree gets signed; it requires sustained investment in regulated venues and stable operating conditions, neither of which is guaranteed mid-reform.

29 August is the date that decides the credibility of Italy’s gambling tax trajectory. Leo’s decree and Abodi’s advertising bill need to reach the statute books before that fiscal delegation expires. Both involve thorny compensation arrangements and political horse-trading that remain unsettled. If the Meloni government delivers, the 2026 Budget incorporates a genuinely restructured gambling framework. If it does not, Italy enters another year of concession extensions, the black market consolidates further, and the gap between ADE’s revenue optimism and market reality widens considerably.