Italian court upholds €45,000 slot sanctions over distance rule

The TAR Emilia-Romagna, Parma section, rejected an appeal by a bar in Reggio Emilia and upheld penalties of €9,000 for each of five AWP machines, €45,000 in total, together with seals placed on the devices to stop game collection. The court ruled in judgment 479, published on 20 October 2026, that replacing the machines with new ones at a venue within 500 metres of sensitive locations amounted to a prohibited new installation.

The case concerned five machines connected to the ADM network of one concessionaire, removed on 26 September 2023 and replaced with five other AWPs connected on 29 September 2023 through a different concessionaire. The municipality treated the operation as a new installation in a prohibited zone. Records dated 2 January 2024 also named the concessionaire Netwin as jointly liable for payment of the sanctions. The owner and the company operating the bar challenged both the findings and the municipality's later refusal to annul them on its own initiative, communicated on 29 February 2024.

The appellants argued that the relationship with Netwin derived from a contract of 3 July 2014, before the regional ban was introduced, and on that basis excluded that the switch of concessionaire could be classed as a new installation. The defence also contested regional resolution 831/2017 in the part where it referred to the connection of machines to telematic networks to define a new installation, arguing that the resolution had extended the content of the regional law without adequate regulatory power. It further raised a defect in the investigation, the absence of fault on the operator's part, which it said had relied on the pre-existing contract and regional clarifications, and doubts over constitutionality with respect to articles 3 and 41 of the Constitution.

The court found the decisive point in the material difference of the five AWP machines, described in the judgment as new and different from those previously installed by Lottomatica. The machines had different identification numbers, as shown in public registers, a point the judgment says the defence did not specifically contest. The court therefore held it unnecessary to decide whether connection to the network alone, renewal of the contract or a change of concessionaire could amount to a new installation, and placed the case directly within the installation of new machines, the primary case prohibited by law. Regional law 5/2013 of Emilia-Romagna, article 6, paragraph 2-bis, prohibits new installation in premises less than 500 metres from sensitive locations, measured by the shortest pedestrian route.

The court rejected the first ground and found the remaining grounds unfounded, given the irrelevance of the arguments on the change of concessionaire to the installation it had established. It rejected the Region's preliminary objection of lateness, holding that the refusal of annulment on the authority's own initiative had involved a fresh assessment of the investigation and of the operator's arguments and was not a merely confirmatory act. With the appeal dismissed, the challenged measures remain in force. The appellants were ordered to pay €1,500 to the Region and €1,500 to the municipality, €3,000 in total in legal costs, plus statutory additions.