ACADI representative says Italy’s budget measures weigh on gaming machines

Geronimo Cardia, a lawyer, accountant and statutory auditor who represents ACADI-Confcommercio, said Italy's budget measures aggravate unresolved structural problems in the public gaming sector. He spoke on a panel on the current state and future prospects of the Italian public gaming market.

Cardia said ACADI had put forward proposals in 2025 to support the sector during the transition to a reorganisation. They included raising the maximum win to €200 and the stake to €2. According to the association's representative, these measures found room in the budget, but the overall approach of the legislation would risk undoing their positive effects.

Cardia said the PREU reduction was four points while the payout increase was five points, a mismatch he said adds to operators' costs. According to what was reported during his speech, the segment is already contracting by between 5% and 10% a year. He also said supply-chain margins would stay at 10%, compared with 12% today.

For video lottery terminals (VLTs), Cardia criticised a planned further increase in PREU without access to the rebalancing measures provided for other types of machine. Among the association's requests is the ability to accept POS payments on VLTs.

Cardia also objected to the cost of extending machine concessions, pointing to the change from €2,000 to €2,500, and said the association opposes a 25% increase in the burden of the extension. He described the extensions as technical, made necessary because new tenders cannot be held owing to unresolved regulatory and territorial issues. ACADI proposes letting operators join the extension only in part. It also proposes a clause to review the tax measures and extension charges after one year.

Cardia observed that the gaming machine segment is asked to bear new costs, while for scratch cards a different solution is said to have been identified, which is to extend the duration of the concession agreement. The association's representative said the extension would spare a tender planned for 2028, which he valued at about one billion euros. Cardia then put a question directly to the Prime Minister, asking why such different solutions are adopted across the segments of public gaming if the stated aim is to ask everyone for a contribution.

Cardia said the supply chain of small and medium-sized businesses involves about 130,000 workers out of 145,000 employed in the segment.