Slot machines on the decline, gambling on the rise: demand is shifting to other channels
Since 2018, the volume of appliances collected has fallen from 48.7 to 31.5 billion, and the number of employees from 79,500 to 70,000. Cardia: with the mandate having expired, interim measures are needed
Between 2018 and 2025, total gaming revenue in Italia rose from 106.8 to 165.4 billion euros. Over the same period, revenue from gaming machines fell from 48.7 to 31.5 billion; AWP and VLT machines lost their presence in 662 municipalities, and the number of employees in the sector fell from 79,500 to 70,000. Revenue also followed divergent trends: total revenue rose from 10.7 to 11.5 billion, revenue from land-based gaming fell from 9.8 to 8.9 billion, and revenue from gaming machines fell from 6.2 to around 5 billion.
The question that ‘migrates’
These are the figures presented by Geronimo Cardia, president of Acadi-Confcommercio, at the association’s Forum 2026, dedicated to the ‘Social impact of regulations’. According to Cardia, demand ‘does not disappear: it shifts from one product to another, from one channel to another, or else ends up in the black market’.
Distance requirements from sensitive locations and time restrictions have reduced the authorised supply in parts of the territory without curbing overall growth. With the expiry of the mandate for the reorganisation of land-based gambling, he argues, ‘interim measures are vital’: rebalancing the PREU (the single tax levy) and the payout ratio (the proportion of stakes returned as winnings), trialling new-generation AWPs and VLTs, and ensuring that extensions do not become an additional cost for operators.
The Sustainability Report
The Sustainability Report presented at the Forum assesses these effects across four public interests: consumer protection, legality, tax revenue and employment. According to Lino Enrico Stoppani, deputy vice-president of Confcommercio, legal gambling operators ‘are not asking for fewer rules, but better rules’, and their call is for national regulation of the physical network based on supervision, training, technology and prevention.
The shift to online
According to Mario Lollobrigida, Director of Gaming at the Customs and Monopolies Agency, the reduction in the number of gaming machines does not reduce overall gambling activity but simply shifts part of it online. The fragmentation caused by distance restrictions, time limits and other constraints makes it difficult for a licence holder to know where and under what conditions they will be able to operate, and therefore to plan tenders: it takes around a year to prepare and complete one, hence the need for extensions. The reorganisation bill drawn up in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) and the General Accounting Office, which had reached Palazzo Chigi, was, he recalls, ‘balanced’ and should be taken up again in the next parliamentary term.
