Betting on misery: The dark side of Italy's gambling passion

By Alvise Armellini

PISA, Italy (Reuters) -When Luciano walked into an anti-addiction clinic in the central Italian city of Pisa, the only thing he had not lost to years of gambling were the clothes he was wearing. Everything else - family homes, savings, his dignity - was gone.

"I devoted myself to casinos, horses, everything. Basically, I toured all the casinos in Europe; I spent all my assets, I gambled them, I gambled everything away in those places," the 69-year-old retired railway worker told Reuters.

Luciano's story exemplifies some of the darker realities behind Italy's emergence as Europe's largest gambling market, with the spread of online and smartphone betting making it ever easier to place wagers.

The growth of Italy's gambling industry has outpaced Britain, Germany, and France, with gross gaming revenues - the difference between the amount wagered and the amount won - hitting 21.5 billion euros ($25 billion) in 2024.

FAMILY VALUES, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE MAFIA

Booming betting habits have helped to line state coffers and have put conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a self-declared defender of family values, at odds with the Catholic Church and others who have called for tighter regulation.

"(Gambling) ruins people, it impoverishes, in many cases it destroys relationships, so it is clear that a huge effort (to control it) is needed by everyone," the head of the Italian Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, said in June.

There are indications that the mafia has a hand in Italy's gambling addiction: this year's "Black Book of Gambling" report, compiled by the CGIL trade union, showed betting was especially widespread in poorer and mafia-ridden southern regions.

Italy's anti-Mafia directorate routinely lists gambling and online betting as a sector infiltrated by mafia groups, particularly the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, for money laundering purposes.

THE GAMBLING FALLOUT

About 20.5 million Italians, 43% of the adult population, gambled at least once in 2022, with a higher incidence among men, the Italian National Research Council reported last year.

Among them, 1.1 million spent at least one hour gambling on a typical day - a pattern common to Luciano and three other former addicts Reuters spoke to for this story. They asked for their names to be changed to protect their privacy.

Francesco, 52, said his gambling started in childhood. He recalled how a teacher in junior high school told him off for playing dice under the desk with a classmate, for 100-lira (5 euro cent) punts.

Although he now feels cured, gambling will always be a temptation. "It's like a vulture sitting on my shoulder," he said.  

Industry representatives say the sector is committed to promoting responsible gambling, and the government agency that oversees it believes excessive curbs do not work, as they push people towards illegal betting. 

"We estimate that there is an underground, illegal market now worth over 10% of the legal market," Mario Lollobrigida, head of the gambling department of the Customs and Monopolies Agency, said last month.

A senior government official added: "Italy takes a pragmatic approach towards gambling, recognising the contribution the industry makes to jobs and the economy, and is happy to support its growth, while also carefully monitoring the risks."

Giovanni, a 44-year-old veterinarian who managed to break his addiction to slot-machine betting around six months ago, said the government was not doing enough to curb gambling.

"It's as if the Italian state is encouraging citizens to gamble. There's advertising everywhere; there are TV ads where they say, 'Do you like easy wins?' It's like they want to create a problem which they then don't know how to handle."

For Luciano, it took around 10 years of group therapy at Pisa's SERD - a public health centre that also treats drug and alcohol addicts - to kick a habit that started when he picked up a flyer on a train that offered free dinner at a casino.

"Every time I'd tell myself: fine, now I'll go play in Monte Carlo because then I'll win back the money I lost and solve my problems. I never solved my problems; I lost everything, I even lost my dignity," he said, holding back tears.

The psychologist who treated him said gambling leads to many broken homes. "We get a lot of very angry wives, and very guilty husbands," SERD's Dr. Rosanna Cardia told Reuters. "Sometimes, marital separation follows."

GROWTH OF ONLINE BETTING

Italians' spending on gambling has surged in the last 20 years, with year-on-year increases of more than 15% following the COVID pandemic, reaching 157.4 billion euros in 2024.

Flutter, the world's biggest online gambling company, bought well-known domestic player Sisal in 2021, and the national market leader Lottomatica has thrived, enjoying a fivefold revenue increase from 2020 to 2024 and taking a spot on Milan bourse's blue-chip index in September.

"We are doing very well in the Italian market, which is a great market both for the consumer dynamics and regulation. We think this trend is a long-term trend and will continue for a very long time," CEO Guglielmo Angelozzi said in July.

Against this backdrop, the state collected 11.5 billion euros in gambling taxes last year - compared to 1.4 billion euros from alcohol and 14.5 billion euros from tobacco - although revenue fell slightly from 11.6 billion euros in 2023.

Industry experts say this was due to the spread of online gambling - subject to lower tax rates - at the expense of more heavily taxed in-person gambling, such as playing slot machines or buying scratch cards. 

Emiliano Contini, a campaigner from the anti-addiction cooperative "Il Cammino", said an outright ban on gambling would be unrealistic. But he called for a more honest assessment of its costs to society.

"From 2004 to 2024, total gambling jumped from around 25 to more than 157 billion euros, but the tax intake rose only from about 7 to 11.5 billion euros: is the game really worth the candle?" 

($1 = 0.8575 euros)

(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, additional reporting by Gabriele Pileri; Graphics by Stefano Bernabei; Editing by Ros Russell)