The report

In Italia, illegal online gaming is worth 20 billion. Socialites at the heart of the system

The Nexus Data Room Observatory reveals that in the first three months of 2026, 4.5 million Italian users were active in illegal online gambling and more than 13 million accessed. A business estimated at 20 billion euros. Social networks play an increasingly important role as a point of contact between players and supply through advertisements

by Pietro Menzani

7 May 2026

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

Nexus Data Room search results
The role of advertising on social networks
How to counter the spread of illegal gaming

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

In Italia, illegal online gaming is a business worth around 20 billion euro and social networks are becoming the real engine of the system. According to the estimates of the first report of the Observatory on the Illegal Online Gaming by Data Room Nexus - an independent structure for the analysis and monitoring of complex phenomena in regulated sectors -, in the period between January and March 2026, over 4.5 million Italian users active in the circuit were registered, for a total of over 13 million accesses.

Nexus Data Room search results

In these three months, the Observatory, thanks to a methodological approach based on empirical observation of digital contexts and structured data analysis, has intercepted an average of 4 or 5 new illegal sites per day, creating a total sample of 500 domains. The estimate is that on an annual basis, at least 5,000 sites are active in Italy.

The research was able to intercept about 10% of this submerged market. And the objective, as Filippo Pucci, scientific director of Data Room Nexus, states, is "to attack all these web spaces in order to constitute, by the end of 2026, a structured and measurable overall reading of the phenomenon".

The difficulty in combating illegal sites lies in the dynamic and fragmented nature of the ecosystem. As emerges from the survey conducted by Nexus, in fact, this is dominated by a multiplicity of small and medium-sized actors capable - after being inhibited - of continuously regenerating themselves through 'sister sites' that allow them to continue operating.

Despite the fact that more than a thousand domains were blocked in 2025, 'the transition of users from one site to another takes place continuously and smoothly: the user continues to play on the new site without realising it, as these platforms are structured to keep the gaming experience and the graphic interface unchanged. In this sense, some infrastructures can be read as systems capable of continually regenerating themselves, to the point of assuming characteristics similar to a phenomenon of operational immortality,' Pucci explains.

The role of advertising on social networks

Although the phenomenon is multi-channel, the main entry point into the illegal online gambling ecosystem has become social networks, which are now the major point of contact between users and supply. According to the report, advertisements appearing on social platforms are perceived as more credible, setting in motion an implicit legitimisation mechanism, lowering the perception of risk and increasing trust in illegal content.

As the scientific director of Data Room Nexus explains, 'the starting point of the research was precisely to record a widespread presence on the web, and mainly on social networks, of a gambling offer. Since there is an absolute ban on advertising, we realised that all the offers we found on social networks were a concrete indicator of the existence of an illegal circuit'. The Observatory therefore identified three social networks with a massive presence of advertisements - Facebook, TikTok and Instagram - and chose the latter as the reference point for analysis because of the large and heterogeneous audience that populates the platform.

How to counter the spread of illegal gambling

'The advertising of illegal gaming,' says Giorgio Greppi, director of media services and protection of fundamental rights at Agcom, 'is not found in newspapers, radio or television. Everything has moved to social networks. The Authority began its sanctioning activities in 2020, but we have come up against the atavistic problem of interventions against online platforms: for years they have enjoyed an exemption from liability that was conceived in 1998, when the Digital Millennium Act was passed in the United States'.

The way out, according to Greppi, lies in the Digital Service Act, adopted by the European Union in 2022 and fully applicable from February 2024: 'an article of the regulation stipulates that the platform is in any case exempt from liability, even if it acts in anticipation of an offence. The only possible solution at the moment is to hope for a strong implementation of the article. We are waiting for the outcome of this regulation, which is brand new and the only way to seriously resolve this issue'.

Luca Turchi, Director of the Control Office of the Customs and Monopolies Agency, joined the appeal launched by Greppi and said he hoped that 'the Digital Service Act could provide an important tool for combating illegality, which has a dynamic capacity to regenerate. We must all act together. This is an issue that we must address at supranational, EU level'.

On the front of the fight against illegality, General Michele Esposito, commander of the special revenue protection and tax fraud repression unit of the Guardia di Finanza, finally recalls that "this sector lends itself to the interests of common and organised crime and, consequently, from the point of view of investigative activity which can also become repressive, the Guardia di Finanza has a special department, the Central Investigation Service for Organised Crime, which seeks to identify phenomena of organised crime control over these illicit activities, which are very lucrative and also facilitate money laundering and self-laundering'. On this last aspect, the Revenue Protection Commander emphasised, everything revolves around the system of suspicious reports sent to the Bank of Italy also by those who manage both physical and online gaming.