Slot machine emergency: Italians are gambling less and less. The budget steps in and doubles the stake
1 November 2026, 21:46
Italy had an emergency nobody was talking about: people are playing the slot machines less and less. The technical report on the 2027 budget bill, the document that accompanies the text and calculates its costs and revenues, calls it a «marked fall». Luckily the State has not stood idly by: the budget, which Parliament has yet to examine, doubles the maximum stake from one euro to two. To do so it amends the consolidated public security act, a royal decree of 1931, and so it turns out that all the security of Italians lacked was one more euro on the stake.
Some naive soul will have imagined a country come to its senses. No danger of that: gambling as a whole is growing, because Italians are moving to online sites, where they win more. That is the whole drama, because there the Treasury keeps far less than the quarter it takes from every euro staked on a slot machine. Anyone ruining himself on his phone, as far as the Treasury is concerned, is ruining himself badly.
To bring the runaways back to the machines, the budget offers slightly more generous winnings and a doubled stake, and the report expects «positive effects on takings», meaning the sums staked: 30 per cent more on the reprogrammed machines, almost €3.9 billion a year from 2029, when all of them will be. Part comes back as winnings; the rest is shared between those who run the machines and the State. The gambler going back to the machine is officially a positive effect. The State has calculated, million by million, how much more will be gambled; how many more Italians will fall ill from gambling, in those same pages, it has not found the time to calculate.
It will be said that the State thinks only of money, and that is unfair: it also thinks of the concessions. First among the aims written into the article on slot machines is indeed «safeguarding tax revenue and the value of the concessions»; the health of those who play found no place among those aims. The fund dedicated to those who fall ill from gambling was abolished from 2025, and today the Regions receive a share of little more than €32 million a year to prevent and treat the illness. The Treasury collected €11.4 billion from gambling in 2025, according to the Libro nero sull'azzardo by Cgil, Federconsumatori and Fondazione Isscon: of every thousand euros, not even three go to treating the damage.
Real tact, on the other hand, is reserved for those who run the machines. In 2015 the State imposed an extraordinary contribution on companies in the sector, many challenged it in court and part of it was never paid: now, to those who have not finished paying and drop those lawsuits, the budget offers a discount and exemption from interest. The gambler has his stake doubled; the debtor has his bill cut.
In 2025 Italians lost €21.88 billion gambling, almost as much as the entire budget is worth, about €26 billion. Anyone would be alarmed; the Council of Ministers' statement instead lists the «gaming sector» among those from which it expects higher revenue. To make the State's accounts add up, Italians need to lose some more, and preferably on the slot machines.
In the budget papers, those who play less are a «marked fall», and those who in eleven years have not paid the contribution are a «facilitated settlement».
This article was prompted by a news item published in ANSA on 31 October 2026.