Over the past 10 years, the turnover of the gambling market in Italy has doubled

According to the results of a new study, over the past 10 years, the Italian gambling market has doubled.

This week, independent research company Eurispes published the financial report of the Italian gambling sector for 2019. It states that the total turnover of the gambling business in the country in 2017 reached €101.8 billion, which is more than twice the 2008 figure (€47.5 billion) and almost seven times higher than turnover in 2003 (€15.5 billion).

In fact, Italian gamblers spent almost €19 billion on gambling, of which about €10 billion went to the government in the form of taxes, and about €8.6 billion were earned by gambling operators.

Just over 28% of Italians have played for money at least once. About 18.3% of the players took part exclusively in free games, while only 2% were exclusively interested in online games and almost 8% were absolutely indifferent to gambling in any form.

Lottery was the most popular form of gambling for Italians. 85% of citizens take part in it, while others were less in demand. Slightly more than half (52.7%) of the players are addicted to sports betting, and the bets for horse racing (24%) and land-based casinos (22%) were much less popular.

As for the gambling products, which, according to the Italians, represent the greatest potential for problems in society, slot machines were in the first place. 83.4% of respondents voted for them. They were followed by online gambling (78.3%), sports betting (71.8%), lottery (66.7%) and bingo (65.3%).

Despite the fact that almost every day the headlines of Italian publications report on the facts of unlawful gambling business detection, more than 70% of respondents said that they do not know anything about illegal objects. 22.3% reported that they knew about it, but did not participate. The most courageous citizens, who made up 4.7% of the total number of respondents, admitted that they had participated in gambling games offered by illegal operators.

Italy’s regulated gambling market reported a slowdown in 2018. It is expected that the negative trend will continue in 2019 thanks to a new ban on gambling advertising and higher taxes for both land and online operators.

Earlier it was reported that many Italian teenagers are involved in gambling and most of them have gambling addiction. This is evidenced by data from a study conducted by the University of Bologna and Unipol.