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Italy is Europe's biggest gambling market, outpacing UK,

Germany

and France

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43% of the adult population has gambled at least once per

year

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Catholic Church leading calls for more controls

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Gambling takes toll on society, provides lucrative tax

revenues

By Alvise Armellini

PISA, Italy, Nov 5 (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)