There were some significant changes for Italy’s online gaming world recently as the regulatory structure was reshaped in a big way. The Italian regulator released its new tender for online gambling licenses, which was in accordance with the EU. This is, of course, worth following as its potential impact on Italian poker could be massive.
Italy’s gambling landscape as a whole will be significantly impacted with these new changes. This creates a new chapter of online gambling for the large Mediterranean boot-shaped nation, which could create ripple effects for a country that has a long, strong poker history.
New Changes
To get into the exact details of the changes of Italy unveiling new online gambling licensing framework, the most important thing to note is that the new landscape will offer nine-year licenses. The operators will have until May 30, 2025 to submit applications and, once submitted, the licenses will be awarded within nine months.
The application fee is not one to sneeze at, coming in at a mandatory €7 million. There is also a 3% tax on all revenue for each site that is given a license. The main reason for such a high fee is to discourage any bad actors who may not have the best standing or reputation in the EU. The goal is to make sure that only the most secure and reputable sites get to have a license in Italy.
The expectation is for about fifty licenses in total to be approved, which will create a pretty big windfall for the Italy Customs and Monopolies Agency. This would come out to €350 million in application fees alone.
More to Come
For now, these changes do not directly affect online poker or the best Italy online poker sites. However, that does not stop us from looking to the near future. After all, this is just the first step in what will be a full overhaul of Italy’s iGaming regulations.
The second phase will start in 2026, which will focus on land-based casinos and modernizing those regulations as well. This is important to Italy as well with live poker stops within the country, especially as the new PokerStars Open Tour announced Campione as their first-ever stop. There is also a possibility that Italy could revise their current ban on gambling advertising to match the rest of the EU.
A lot of these changes are long overdue as Italy has had the same regulations since 2011. Of course, things can change very quickly in the online gambling world, so fourteen years is a long time to wait between re-evaluations.
This is obviously an ever-developing story and out of the hands to those in the Italian poker industry. It is still important to monitor from a poker perspective, as it may end up having a large impact on Italian online poker and Italian poker as a whole.