Italy is about to see the biggest expansion of its iGaming in years, after Agenzia della Dogane e dei Monopoli (ADM), the country's state-supported regulator, confirmed the issuing of online gambling licenses to as much as seventy operators and companies!

After numerous delays and snags hit along the way – including protests by recently-elected Italian officials regarding the amount of gambling companies and advertisements in this South European nation – the confirmation comes with the note that...

...66 out of 70 operators have been given full permission to conduct business in this 60 million inhabitants country's market.

A Mix of Domestic and Foreign

The four remaining operators – home-based Scommettendo, Spati, Sogno di Tolosa and offshore one, Universal Solutions – were given special licenses with unspecified conditions.

Among world-famous, top-tier companies that will be bringing their gaming products and services to Italian populace are:

• The Stars Group
• William Hill
• Paddy Power Betfair
• GVC
• Bet365...

...and numerous others, including Nordic Casumo and Videoslots.

Licenses, that expire on December 31st 2022, all come with a €200,000 fee and a requirement of an already existing Italian or EU license for all operators, domestic as well as international.

Operators also had to submit sufficient documents proving that they have made revenue of at least €1.5 million in the last two years.

A Bit of a Delay

“66 out of 70 operators have been given full permission to conduct business”

Despite the fact that seventy new operators sounds like a very big deal, the Italian regulator actually expected to gain more, because 120 licenses have been made available– and “only” 80 operators have applied!

What happened to the remaining ten who didn't get them is yet unclear: they could have had their applications rejected or maybe they pulled out of the contention themselves. But what is known for sure...

...is that the finalization of the licensing process is long overdue, because the window for submitting applications only opened in January last year (originally scheduled for September 2017).

Unpopular Measures

Italy's new conservative government objected against the level of gambling advertising and introduced the “Dignity Decree” that outlawed all gambling advertising. The law came into effect on January 1st.

This was followed by an even more controversial move – the introduction of a 25% tax on all online casino revenue! In addition to this...

...higher taxes have been applied to sports betting (24% online, 20% land-based) and general virtual betting (22%). These new levels of taxation also went into effect on January 1st.

Luigi di Maio, Italy's deputy premier, defended the new taxation system, saying that, “Italy now has the most taxed gambling sector in whole continent and that it was time to take money from those who in recent years had taken too much money from Italians.”

Source:

“Italy issues 70 new iGaming licenses”, igamingbusiness.com, February 13, 2019.

https://lcb.org/news/seventy-operators-approved-for-italian-license