ADM Tightens Online Rules as Italy’s Tax Yield Falls to 6.9%
Italy’s Court of Auditors confirmed that total gambling stakes hit €165.325bn in 2025, up 4.8% from €157.403bn in 2024. Gambling tax revenue fell to €11.473bn, down 0.7% from the year before. The gap is driven by a shift toward remote gambling, which now makes up more than 60% of the market but contributes a far smaller share of tax revenue per euro staked.
Italy’s Customs and Monopolies Agency, ADM, is finalizing the next phase of its remote gambling reform following the award of new online concessions. Upcoming rules will cover game certification, product approvals, bonuses, virtual accounts, and bet acceptance protocols.
ADM has increased talks with concessionaires, testing bodies, and trade groups. Certification timelines are the main point of friction. Operators, labs, and technology suppliers, represented through LOGiCO, have pushed back on the pace of implementation and asked for more clarity before deadlines hit.
Transitional rules already apply to live dealer products, streaming bingo, card games, and interactive betting formats. These will migrate to new certification protocols, including PGDA 3.0, PBAD 4.0, and PSID 3.0.
ADM also clarified its bonus policy. Bonuses remain legal if they comply with concession terms and are framed as informational rather than promotional, in line with restrictions under the Dignity Decree. AGCOM is reviewing related guidance on legal gambling communication.
Retail reform is moving slower. Open questions remain on tenders, distance rules between venues, network rationalization, and machine renewal. Online products can be certified and updated under clearer rules. Retail operators cannot yet plan with the same certainty.
The fiscal data explains why this gap matters. Remote gambling stakes reached €100.8bn in 2025, up 9.5% year on year, and now account for over 60% of the national market. Online channels also dominate sports betting, with close to €14bn of the €19.2bn betting total placed online.
Skill games show the clearest mismatch. They generated €81.208bn in stakes, equal to 49.1% of the market, but produced only €875m in tax revenue. That puts their gross tax yield at 1.1%.
AWP and VLT machines show the opposite pattern. They generated €31.483bn in stakes, under one-fifth of the market, but delivered €5.015bn in tax revenue, nearly half the total. Their gross tax yield reached 15.9%.
Corte dei Conti flagged rising concentration in the market. Smaller operators continue to exit, while larger groups hold more of the concession base. Retail outlets are losing market share as play shifts online.
Concession extension fees came in mixed. Remote gambling and betting generated €77.9m, above the €74.5m forecast. Bingo brought in only €7.35m against an expected €19.76m, due largely to ongoing litigation in the sector.
Enforcement activity also increased. More than 1,000 illegal gambling websites were blocked in 2025, up from about 700 in 2024. Guardia di Finanza recorded 1,049 violations, reported 379 people, and identified 70 illegal betting collection points.
💡 TGJ Take
The numbers show a regulator solving one problem and creating another. ADM is building a faster, clearer certification path for online operators, and capital will follow that clarity. But the channel growing fastest, skill games at a 1.1% tax yield, is the worst performer for the Treasury. Retail machines carry 15.9% yield and keep losing share. If ADM does not move retail reform at the same pace as online certification, Italy will keep growing a market that generates less tax per euro wagered every year. Operators betting on Italy should plan around online product speed, not retail recovery, for the next two years at minimum.
