Introduction

The present chapter summarises the findings of a case study carried out as part of the project entitled ‘Gambling Policy in European Welfare Regimes. A European Research Project on the Profitability of Gambling’ 1 which compared gambling regulations and how they are justified in different countries.

Italy ranks sixth in the world in per-person gambling losses, and fourth place in total countrywide losses, which totalled around 20 billion euros in 2013. 2 According to the Italian Customs and Monopolies Agency (AAMS), the amount of money spent by Italians for gambling has grown constantly over the last ten years. By 2016, it had reached about 96 billion euros 3 (AAMS 2016), or about 2.3% of Italian GDP, while after-tax net revenue for the sector was 8.9 billion euros (AAMS 2017). The electronic gambling machine (EGM) market collects the largest amount of money, with slot machines taking 27% and VLTs 4 taking 23% (AAMS 2017). According to the Italian gambling industry association, 5 the sector includes 6000 enterprises and 150,000 employees. However, the economist Pelligra (2017) criticises these data and states that only 30,000 people are directly employed by the gambling industry, while other kinds of job deal only partially with gambling.

To have a complete picture of the extent of Italian gambling, the figures for illicit gambling should be added to these numbers. Many official documents based on law enforcement investigations and judicial inquiries report on the presence of organised crime on the Italian gambling scene, both legal and illegal (Anti-Mafia Commission and Social Affairs Committee 2016). According to some estimates (Fiasco 2014b), the ‘black’ component in the electronic gambling machine 6 (EGM) sector was 8.6 billion euros in 2012, which is almost the same as the total State revenue from all gambling in that year.

Despite these numbers, population surveys on gambling have only been conducted since the end of the 90s and no comprehensive statistical data on gambling disorders have yet been produced, as a national surveillance project was only recently introduced as an experiment (Department for Antidrug Policies 2016). In any case, the estimated percentages of ‘at risk’ gamblers vary between 1.3 and 3.8%, while the estimate for ‘problem’ gamblers is between 0.5 and 2.2% of the general population (Department for Antidrug Policies 2015).

As regards the regulatory system, the Italian model is unique in Europe for three main reasons. First, in the absence of a national framework law, it is based on fragmented and inconsistent legislation (Zenaro 2006; Fiasco 2011), resulting from a long and complicated series of riders to finance and budgetary acts (Bonfiglioli 2014). Second, the state monopoly operates through ‘concessions’, a regulatory tool that differs from the more common ‘licenses’. Concessionaires operate in a market without competition; they are private enterprises that—through a public tender—receive a concession from AAMS to manage the operators’ network by collecting taxes and sharing revenues. Operators in turn are authorised to distribute and install gambling machines and manage collections. At the end of the chain are the point-of-sale retailers to whom the operators contract out the machines. The regulatory system is even more complicated, as each specific gambling sector has its own actors and different rules. For instance, sport bets can be placed with several concessionaires, while instant and traditional lotteries are handled by only one concessionaire. In such a complicated system, responsibilities are also less than straightforward. The most important aspect is that, since they are performing a public function, concessionaires are not held accountable for the possible harm caused by gambling (Fiasco 2014c), which makes class actions almost impossible. In 2016, there were 559 concessions, though the lion’s share of revenues—from EGMs, i.e., slots and VLTs—is split among only 12 concessionaires (AAMS 2017). Furthermore, the gambling market is dominated by a few well-established national companies—namely Lottomatica, Snai and Sisal—even though they have now merged with international companies (e.g., Snai with Cogetech, Lottomatica with GTECH S.p.a.) and most concessionaires are financial holding companies with headquarters abroad. It is worth noting that the EU has repeatedly ruled on the inadmissibility of the Italian monopoly system, as being skewed in the interests of the concessionaires.

The third peculiar characteristic of Italian gambling regulation is that the use of gambling revenues is neither transparent nor linked to specific purposes; the public is not informed about how collected money is spent, even though the government—in parliament debates and through the mass media—sometimes presents specific arguments to justify the introduction of regulatory changes. For instance, Law 39/2009, the so-called ‘Abruzzo Decree’, introduced several innovative measures ostensibly to raise money to help earthquake victims, though how much was collected through this measure and how it was spent remained unknown.

In the following paragraphs, we will summarise the main phases that led to the current regulatory system, analysing the main justifications used by the legislature and exploring beneficiaries’ attitudes towards the gambling industry. Counter-arguments will then be discussed.

Methods

Data are based on documentary analysis—including secondary sources, reports, white papers and grey literature—and open-ended interviews. Furthermore, a systematic review of Italian laws and legislative proceedings dealing with gambling since 1980 was performed in order to understand how the liberalisation of gambling has been implemented and justified in Italy. Lastly, six key informants were interviewed in individual, in-depth interviews conducted either face-to-face or by telephone/Skype in 2015. Interviewees included scholars and beneficiaries. In the first case, selecting interviewees was fairly simple, as there are very few sociologists who engage in gambling studies in Italy. Beneficiaries were chosen from among representatives of large organisations that have received funds from the gambling industry and at the same time are involved in gambling prevention actions or services (see Table 3.1).

Table 3.1 Interviewees
Full size table

All the people who were invited to participate agreed to be interviewed, except for one person who played a role in the legislative process and whose organisation received a grant from the gambling industry. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim by a researcher who also led/observed the interviews. Texts were then analysed using Atlas.ti adopting an ‘abductive approach’ (Timmermans and Tavory 2012), i.e., based on theory as well as actual data and thus capable of generating new knowledge. Since one beneficiary did not agree to be cited, interviewees’ names are not indicated and recognisable identifiers are only used for those who gave us written permission.

The History of Italian Gambling Legislation

The history of the legislative process is an example of progressive liberalisation in a country where gambling is forbidden by the Constitution: the legislature circumvented this obstacle simply by introducing the term ‘legal gaming’. Our review substantially confirmed Fiasco’s analysis (2010), which divides the history of the Italian legislation into four periods. During the first period, from 1889 to 1992, gambling included a few types of games and was limited to specific places, while EGMs were prohibited in public places. The first signs of liberalisation dated back to 1987, when Law 123 (Law of 16 March 1987) authorised the Lotto game in more than 400,000 tobacco shops, which replaced the ‘policy shops’ administered by the State.

However, the real legalisation process started at the beginning of the 90s. According to Fiasco (2010), the second phase began in 1992 and lasted until 2002, during a period marked by institutional and economic crisis and the consequent urgent need for tax revenues in order to meet Maastricht criteria. Since then, gambling has become an important source of income for the State, which increased the number and the types of games and places where gambling is allowed (Pedroni 2014). Instant lotteries were introduced in 1994, followed a year later by the authorisation of slot machines in public places (Law of 6 October 1995), while Superenalotto—a type of lottery that became very popular—was launched in 1997. The legalisation process culminated in 2001, when the Budget Act devolved the power to authorise betting shops to local administrations (planned since 1997). In the same period, a process of outsourcing also began, by introducing specific measures regarding the granting and the management of gambling through concessionaires.

In the third phase, from 2003 to 2010, legislation seemed to aim more at encouraging investments in the gambling industry than at increasing government revenues (Fiasco 2010). This was confirmed by a study led by two economists who investigated the taxation system in order to explain the paradox of decreasing state revenues between 2009 and 2012, despite steadily growing expenditures on gambling (Gandolfo and De Bonis 2013). The authors argued that the decrease was due to the different tax treatment applied to traditional and new games—the latter being subject to lower rates—combined with a change in gamblers’ preferences in favour of the latter. They also concluded that the taxation system failed to maximise revenue for the State while bringing ‘significant economic gains for the [gambling] operators’ (Gandolfo and De Bonis 2013, p. 19, our translation).

Furthermore, the State continued to divest itself of control functions in this period. The Independent State Monopolies Administration—which merged with the Customs Agency in 2012 to form the new Customs and Monopolies Agency—was granted considerable independence in the regulation and fiscal control of the market, and was put in charge of several functions, including management, regulation, planning and marketing strategy (Fiasco 2014b). According to Pedroni (2014), by refusing to exert a strong role in the gambling market, the State has definitely lost its ‘symbolic capital’, i.e., its credibility in the public eye. One of the most important laws of this period is the so-called ‘Bersani Decree’ (Law of 4 August 2006), which authorised online gambling and opened the market to foreign dealers. This last measure was in line with several European Court of Justice rulings, specifically Gambelli (2003) and Placanica (2007), which established that the Italian legislation on concessions was contrary to Articles 43 and 49 EC (now the TFEU—Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) concerning the freedom of establishment and the freedom to provide services. At the same time, however, the decree took care not to damage the interests of concessionaires. This was later noticed by the European Court of Justice, which in its ruling on Costa and Cifone (2012) stated that Italian legislation was inconsistent with the principles of equal treatment and effectiveness. In the same vein, the 2007 Budget Act introduced new online lotteries, and Law 149/2008 (Law of 25 September 2008) authorised VLTs. Video lotteries were officially introduced by the Abruzzo Decree (Decree-Law of 28 April 2009) which, exploiting a national tragedy, also allowed tobacco shops to stay open on holidays and made online gambling—poker, roulette and casinos—legal. On the other hand, in 2010 the legislature referred to the addiction problem for the first time, and introduced the term ‘ludopatia’, literally ‘gambling disease’ (Law of 13 December 2010).

The fourth phase, according to Fiasco (2010), started with Decree 98/2011 (Decree-Law of 6 July 2011). He states that the opportunity the degree provided to gamble anywhere, thanks to mobile devices such as cellular phones and tablets, had the effect of a ‘hydrogen bomb’ on the phenomenon, from a legal, ethical, political and criminological perspective (Fiasco 2010). Another turning point—and partly in the opposite direction—in the history of Italy’s gambling legislation (Pedroni 2014), came in 2012, with the so-called ‘Balduzzi Decree’ (Decree-Law of 13 September 2012) that included pathological gambling among the conditions contemplated by the National Health Service’s Essential Levels of Care and forced gambling operators to post information about risks and treatment services in gambling venues. Furthermore, the law introduced some limitations on marketing and installing slot machines, mainly to protect minors. However, most of our interviewees believe this law had no real impact. Be that as it may, the Decree undoubtedly had a strong impact on the media, which increased people’s awareness and ‘galvanises social movements against gambling’ (SCH. 2), such as the ‘No Slot Movement’, which includes lay and Catholic non-profit organisations and individual citizens. In the same period, municipalities—responding to pressure and protests from citizens and social organisations who voiced concerns about the heavy economic and social costs of gambling—started to introduce local regulations that reduced gambling opportunities, mainly by lowering the number of slot machines and VLTs and limiting the times and places where gambling is authorised. Initially, the government overturned all municipal regulations, citing State supremacy over policies concerning public order and the Directive 123/2006 CE, so-called Bolkestein Directive. However, there was an important shift in 2011, when the Constitutional Court ruled that local authorities have the right to limit gambling for public health reasons (Jarre 2016). Since then, a steadily increasing number of municipalities have introduced local regulations, mainly focusing on ‘timing’ and ‘zoning’ measures that reduce the hours and places where gambling is allowed (Jarre 2016). Urged by municipalities, the Regions started to introduce regional regulations as well. To arrive at a nationwide agreement, the matter was assigned to the Permanent Conference on the Relationships between Central Government, the Regions and the Self-Governing Provinces of Trento and Bolzano. After lengthy negotiations, an agreement was reached in September 2017, whereby the number of gambling venues (those specifically dedicated to gambling as well as bars and tobacco shops) will be halved in three years, passing from the present 98,600 to about 48,000 at the end of 2019, Furthermore, EGMs will be reduced by 35%, from 400,000 to 265,000. Even though this is the first time that the State has introduced a measure aimed at reducing supply, the conflict between local and the national governments continues. In fact, the local regulations might be even more restrictive in their effects than the State measures and, for this reason, are still being challenged by the government. This is the case, for instance, of the Piedmont Regional Law (09/2016), in place since November 2017, which the government regards as ‘prohibitionist’ (see e.g., La Stampa for December 7, 2017), as it establishes that slot machines cannot be placed less than 500 meters away from what are defined as ‘sensitive places’, including schools, places of worship, shops that buy gold, therapeutic communities and cash machines. The minimum distance is less in towns with fewer than 5000 inhabitants. The purpose is obviously that of confining gambling to specific places, thereby countering the rise in problem gambling. The Ministry of the Economy, however, has stated that this measure will create a major loss in terms in State revenues, and has thus threatened local governments with having to make up for this shortfall. The government has also taken the position that putting excessive limits on legal gambling would provide a boost to the illicit market.

The conflict is clearly an outcome of the disordered and stratified legislative process whereby gambling in Italy has been liberalised over the last twenty years, in the absence of a framework law. Furthermore, it highlights how the different degrees of economic interest associated with gambling gravitate to different political positions.

The Gambling Industry’s Corporate Social Responsibility and the Beneficiaries’ Attitude

As Pedroni notes (2014, p. 83), ‘in the field of gambling production, concessionaires compete to accumulate reputational capital’. To this end, well-established concessionaires defend their stronger position against new concessionaires (e.g., foreign and online gambling providers) through the so-called corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, a form of corporate self-regulation which is actually a kind of marketing (Fiasco 2014a; Cai et al. 2012), and scholars recommend that more interventionist policies be adopted on this issue (Yani-de-Soriano et al. 2012; Hancock et al. 2008).

CSR activities are described in the so-called ‘Social’ or ‘Sustainability’ Reports, official documents that show how enterprises allocate their resources and emphasise their good performance, including the number of jobs created and the attention devoted to human resources and the environment. For example, IGT (formed from the merger between GTECH and Lottomatica) transferred 6.4 billion euros to local communities around the world in 2014. Social commitment is expressed by promoting education, sports, music, culture and social inclusion. Thus, IGT Italy financed a programme entitled ‘Vincere da Grandi’ sponsored by Il Gioco del Lotto which offered sports and music initiatives to disadvantaged families through cooperation with local social welfare networks, municipalities, schools and social services. As the group’s Sustainability Report states, ‘IGT’s Lottomatica has an established relationship with the country at the local level and with public institutions at the national level’ (IGT 2015, p. 59). Beneficiaries also include the Community of Sant’Egidio, whose founder took a public position against gambling and contributed to the approval of the Balduzzi Decree when working as a government minister.

According to the latest Sisal Sustainability Report (2016), the company transferred 5.2 billion euros to local communities in 2015: 2.8 billion euros in local taxes and duties, 194 million euros to charity and 2.2 billion euros for sponsorship. The programme covers five main areas (sports, innovation, culture, the social sector and scientific research, mainly consisting of medical research on serious illnesses). Several foundations and associations are beneficiaries of the gambling industry, including well-known international organisations and other national or local associations and foundations, including those dealing with several kinds of addiction.

According to interviewed scholars (SCH. 2), there is increasing competition for resources among potential beneficiaries who ‘having realised that the legislative context is problematic, try to squeeze what they can out of the concessionaires’ (SCH. 2:82). However, ‘many associations are asking for money under the table, and some priests do not want to appear so as not to lose face’ (SCH. 1:59).

Both Lottomatica and Sisal, together with other concessionaires and the Customs and Monopolies Agency, fund a national gambling prevention project, consisting in a website linked to a helpline. The service is called ‘Gioca Responsabile’ (literally: play responsibly) and is run by Federserd, the most important Italian scientific federation of professionals working in public and private addiction services. The website provides information about gambling-related risks and regional public and private treatment services, self-evaluation instruments and an anonymous chat service for psychological and legal support. Recently, online behavioural therapy has also been provided, preceded by a diagnostic procedure aimed at identifying the gambler’s profile.

The CSR professionals’ rhetorical strategy is to confine problems to very small numbers of people and frame them within a narrative of personal responsibility (Baumberg et al. 2014). As Zavattiero (2010) noted, the use of advertising messages such as ‘play with moderation’ are strategies to warn gamblers, who are then held responsible for becoming addicted. In this way, ‘the causes [of gambling addiction] instead of being seen as arising from certain features of the supply, are attributed to some characteristics of the single player, and the stigma is shifted from the gaming system to the individual personality’ (SCH. 3:16).

None of our interviewed beneficiaries adopted this kind of justification—they seem quite aware that gambling problems affect different populations—not only addicts or the so-called vulnerable groups, such as young people. Nevertheless, they focus on their institutional commitments and limit their responsibility to their own target, minors, for instance (BEN. 2:9). Furthermore, rather than criticising the industry, all beneficiaries emphasise the State’s negligence, confirming Pedroni’s (2014) thesis that the State has lost its symbolic capital to ‘responsible’ enterprises: ‘Dealers do nothing but perform a function that the government determines, that is, to handle gambling in order, first, to eliminate illegal gambling, and second, to recover resources for the public treasury’ (BEN. 2:7). Interestingly, while they all criticised the weakness and the ambiguity of the State (BEN. 1:6), they acquiesced in its rhetoric, which stresses the need to increase government revenues and to combat illegal gambling (SCH. 3:28).

Furthermore, to justify their relationship with the gambling industry, beneficiaries adopt a pragmatic attitude, primarily by putting ‘facts’ before ‘ideologies’, i.e., focusing on the good results that might not have been achieved without the money received from concessionaires. This is the case, for instance, of the ‘GiocaReponsabile’ helpline service mentioned above. The fact that the service is funded by the gambling industry has sparked much criticism both inside and outside the treatment addiction sector. However, according to one interviewee, ‘those who prefer to think in ideological terms, should consider (…) the fact that the [web] service has already dealt with 10,000 problematic situations in five years, more than double that of all other Italian [local] services put together’ (BEN. 1:7). This pragmatic stance is also supported by our other interviewees, who maintain that concessionaires have not attempted to exert a significant influence over the projects or services they funded. According to the interviewees’ accounts, the negotiation process generally includes an agreement that leaves the beneficiaries free to develop the project or service as they wish. For instance, the funders originally proposed ‘GiocaResponsabile’ as an online orientation and counselling service, but it was modified by the beneficiaries to include online therapy, which ‘required a rather long and in-depth negotiation process with the concessionaire, because this was not part of their idea of intervention’ (BEN. 1:5). The need to dialogue with the gambling industry is also stated in a Federserd official policy document (2015) declaring that concessionaires should be involved in the political negotiations surrounding the reform of the Italian gambling regulatory system.

It is worth noting that not all our interviewees assumed a pragmatic stance towards receiving money from the industry, as one—a priest leading a not-for-profit association—recognised that they ‘have probably been inconsistent in accepting funds’ and that ‘to be fairly rigorous, we should just refuse this type of financing’ (BEN. 3:5).

Discussion

Since the 90s, Italian governments of all political stamps have gradually expanded the gambling market, in some cases exploiting exceptional events that call for solidarity, such as earthquakes. They justified the liberalisation process with two main arguments, often combined: the first being the need to increase tax revenues, the second the goal of limiting the spread of illegal gambling.

The first declared aim could be questioned simply by wondering why a taxation system that according to some economists (Gandolfo and De Bonis 2013) maximised the industry’s income rather than the State’s has been adopted for many years. 7 This has been called the Italian gambling system paradox (Gandolfo and De Bonis 2013; Fiasco 2010; Dotti 2013).

Scholars have rebutted the first justification by arguing that gambling has a negative multiplier effect in the economy, setting up a vicious circle (Dotti 2013; Fiasco 2009). According to this stance, gambling does not create profits, nor encourage activities related to research, production and marketing. Indeed, gamblers usually ‘reinvest’ their winnings in further gambling. As a consequence, the gabling sector is growing in proportion to the crisis in trade, industry and services, hampering investment and misallocating resources, and thus creates a real diseconomy (Dotti 2013). Furthermore, gambling contributes to impoverishing Italian families by undermining people’s ability to manage their household budget (Fiasco 2009) and spreading the false belief that they can make money through gambling rather than work (Zavattiero 2010).

Moreover, gambling is a form of ‘voluntary’ and regressive taxation (Sarti and Triventi 2012; Beckert and Lutter 2009) that increases socio-economic inequalities. It has been demonstrated that lower-income families spend more, in percentage terms, on gambling than higher-income families (Grun and Mckeigue 2000; Beckert and Lutter 2009; Williams et al. 2011; Sarti and Triventi 2012); in Italy, this spending is estimated at around 3 and 1% of the families’ total income, respectively (Dotti 2013). This thesis is confirmed by the territorial inequalities between Southern and Northern Italy, which indicate that the propensity to gamble is higher in poorer regions (Croce et al. 2009; Zavattiero 2010; Fiasco 2014b). Taking a geographical perspective also shows that the propensity to gamble is inversely proportional to the level of education: the lower the level of education, the higher the probability of gambling (Sarti and Triventi 2012). In any case, availability plays a role; interestingly, EGMs (slot machines and VLTs) are concentrated mainly in southern regions, specifically in Sardegna, Abruzzo, Campania and Calabria (Anti-Mafia Commission 2016).

The second argument used by the legislature to justify the progressive liberalisation of gambling, i.e., the goal of limiting the illegal gambling market, has been confuted by the report of the parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission and Social Affairs Committee (2016), unanimously approved by the Chamber of Deputies. The report, based on law enforcement investigations and judicial documents, confirms that the expansion of legal gambling has paved the way to and strengthened illegal gambling (Fiasco 2014b), primarily by increasing demand. It is argued that the steady expansion of legal gambling forms has increased the number of gamblers, and that some ‘legal gamblers’ are subsequently attracted by similar and apparently more appealing illegal offerings. Furthermore, despite constant changes designed to make the system more secure, organised crime always finds new ways to tamper with it, partly because there are no adequate sanctions for this crime (Fiasco 2014b). According to the Report of the Anti-Mafia Commission to Parliament (2016), from 2013 to 2015 the Financial Police seized 1.3 billion euros from illegal gambling dealers. Many court cases relating to illegal gambling are cited, for instance the proceedings against the Lampada-Valle clan who cloned slot machine cards in order to elude tax payment.

The Anti-Mafia Commission (2016) emphasises that the boundaries between legal and illegal markets are blurred, and that organised crime has a major interest in all forms of gambling: legal, semi-legal and illegal. First, the legal gambling market provides organised crime with a major opportunity for recycling and reinvesting money obtained through traditional criminal activities, for instance by purchasing winning lottery tickets at a premium. Furthermore, illegal organisations penetrate the gambling market in different ways, which, based on the police investigation, include: extorting concessionaires and gambling venues; obliging bars and cafés to install video poker machines; infiltrating the legal market either through dummy companies or shareholding; and running unauthorised betting websites located in foreign countries.

It is clear, then, that not only do the legal and illegal gambling markets coexist, but the latter has grown significantly over the last twenty years, despite the parallel expansion of the legal market (Fiasco 2014b). We must also remember that gamblers—especially those living in poorer areas—are likely to end up in the hands of usurers affiliated with organised crime.

Conclusions

The study highlights several aspects which are interesting from both a national and an international perspective, because Italy is among the countries with the highest gambling expenditure and because of its peculiar regulatory system. The history of Italy’s gambling legislation displays all the contradictions and ambiguities of a regulatory system that is not based on systematic and uniform legislation, but on a stratification of secondary measures aimed at increasing the gambling market in a country where gambling is forbidden by the Constitution. Furthermore, as gambling is one of the areas of interest to organised crime, institutions that combat the Mafia have conducted interesting investigations in Italy, which cast doubt on the ‘channelling’ thesis many European countries use as an argument for legalised gambling (Planzer 2014).

Thus, although gambling in Italy has been underinvestigated, the few studies that have been carried out are sufficient to refute the main justifications used by the legislature to support the liberalisation process, i.e., the need to increase State revenues and to limit the illegal gambling market. First, for at least a decade, the taxation system maximised the gambling industry’s income rather than the State’s (Gandolfo and De Bonis 2013). Furthermore, confirming international studies, Italian scholars have shown that (1) gambling has a negative multiplier effect in the economy and is a regressive form of taxation that increases social inequalities; (2) legal gambling may increase illegal gambling and enrich organised crime in different ways.

If the rhetoric of the gambling industry is to confine problems to limited numbers of individuals and to assign the risk to specific target groups, research shows that the gambling issue extends far beyond that of addiction. To date in Italy, while the State has put its credibility at stake on this matter, municipalities and organised civil society—e.g., lay and Catholic associations—are aware of the extent of the problem, and are trying to find possible answers. However, the fact that many cultural and social activities of associations and other institutions, including public ones, depend on gambling industry funds complicates the picture, by introducing the risk of creating conflicts of interest among those who seek to prevent the phenomenon and to minimise the social harm (Livingstone and Adams 2015; Sulkunen et al. 2018, forthcoming).

Notes

  1. 1.

    The project was funded by the Academy of Finland. More detailed information and results are published in the research report (Rolando and Scavarda 2016).

  2. 2.

    Data published by The Economist based on H2 Gambling Capital. http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/02/daily-chart-0 (last retrieved 15/05/2016).

  3. 3.

    Just to make a comparison, the turnover of the Italian automotive industry was 36.9 billion euros.

  4. 4.

    Unlike slot machines, video lottery terminals offer a multiple choice of games, the maximum bet is 10 euros instead of 2, and maximum winnings amount to 5000 euros instead of 100 euros.

  5. 5.

    http://www.sistemagiocoitalia.it/.

  6. 6.

    EGMs include both slot machines and video lottery terminals.

  7. 7.

    Indicatively from 2003 to 2017, when a new Decree Law (50/2017) increased tax rates. No studies of the efficacy of the new regulation system have yet been conducted.