Gaming grows in Italy

Ministry of Economy data revealed that the Italian gaming market has experienced optimistic growth in the last decade.

As Italy recovers from the international economic crisis that started in 2008, the local gaming industry has experienced optimistic results in the last decade, according to the American journalism agency Bloomberg. The business section of the company calculated the Italian growth based on Eurostat, Ministry of Economy data.

As the investigation reveals, local players spent US$113 billion last year in entertainment gaming services, such as slot machines, casino games and lotteries. The gaming revenue increase was also boosted by the series of amendments to Italian laws on gambling machines and online gaming introduced in 2015.

Meanwhile, the online poker sector in Italy reported a decline of 2.9 percent during July’s operations. Authorities are already preparing new conditions to improve the financial system and regulating process to participate in local online poker market, which would share liquidity with Spain, France and Portugal.

The tax on AWP (amusement with prizes machines) increased from 13 percent to 17.5 percent. Whilst the increase for VLTs (video lottery terminals) was up 0.5 percent to 5.5 percent. And taxes on online gaming were set at 20 percent of the net receipts.

Furthermore, Italy has signed an international agreement with France, Portugal and Spain to set newest agreement on online poker shared liquidity in the European market. Regulators have largely accepted the evidence that shows that countries collect less tax when online poker is segregated.