SAPAR president seeks fairer tax treatment for Italian gaming machines
Regulation2 min read
SAPAR president Sergio D’Angelo said at SiGMA 2026 in Rome that Italy’s budget measures include a 70% payout provision and a reduction in PREU. He argued that the measures place pressure on amusement-machine businesses and called for tax burdens to be distributed more evenly across legal gambling products.
Sergio D’Angelo, president of SAPAR, said at the SiGMA 2026 panel in Rome that Italy's budget law has some positive elements for the amusement machine sector. He added that the law still concentrates the tax burden on a segment that already faces heavy fiscal pressure.
D’Angelo named the 70% payout provision and the reduction in PREU as positive aspects of the budget. He said the combined changes raise tax pressure on the segment by one percentage point. He also said the move from an 11% margin to 10% hits operators harder than the single point suggests. According to D’Angelo, that one point amounts to 10% of the till.
D’Angelo cited an Italian legal gaming volume of 193 billion euros spread across 33 types of game. He argued that fiscal measures nonetheless fall mainly on amusement machines. He referred to revenue targets that rose from 700 to 900 million euros in the budget discussion. In his view, spreading those targets across the 33 game types would have eased the economic impact on small businesses. D’Angelo said he was not necessarily asking for lower taxation than other games, but for more uniform conditions.
D’Angelo also raised the risk of excessive market concentration to the detriment of small and medium-sized businesses. He said companies in difficulty must choose between continuing operations and selling. He linked falling margins to a gradual consolidation of the market around a few large operators. D’Angelo said SAPAR is fully aligned with the concerns voiced by ACADI-Confcommercio.
D’Angelo said the partnership between SAPAR and SiGMA helped create two pavilions devoted to the Italian market.