Betting is causing misery, how did Italians become obsessed with gambling?

When Luciano entered an addiction clinic in the central Italian city of Pisa, the only thing he had not lost to gambling was the clothes he was wearing. Everything else – his homes, his savings, his dignity – was gone.

"I devoted myself to casinos, horses, everything. Basically, I visited all the casinos in Europe; I spent all my fortune, I gambled, I lost everything gambling in those places," the 69-year-old retiree told Reuters.

Luciano's story illustrates some of the darker realities behind Italy's emergence as Europe's largest gambling market, with the proliferation of online and mobile betting making it increasingly easy to place bets.

The growth of Italy's gambling industry has surpassed Britain, Germany and France, with gross gambling revenues reaching 21.5 billion euros in 2024.

The booming betting habits have helped fill state coffers and put conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at odds with the Catholic Church and others who have called for stricter regulations.

“(Gambling) destroys people, impoverishes, in many cases destroys relationships, so it is clear that a great effort (to control it) is needed by everyone,” the head of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, said in June.

There are indications that the mafia has a hand in Italy's gambling addiction. This year's "Black Book of Gambling," a report compiled by the CGIL union, showed that betting was particularly prevalent in the poorer, mafia-ridden southern regions.

The Italian anti-mafia directorate regularly lists online gambling and betting as a sector infiltrated by mafia groups for money laundering purposes.

Around 20.5 million Italians, 43% of the adult population, gambled at least once in 2022.

Francesco, 52, said his gambling began in childhood. He recalled how a teacher in high school scolded him for playing dice under the table with a classmate, for bets of 100 lire (5 euro cents).

Even though he now feels "cured," gambling will always be a temptation.

"It's like an eagle sitting on my shoulder," he said.

Industry representatives say the sector is committed to promoting responsible gambling, and the government agency that oversees it believes excessive restrictions do not work, as they push people towards illegal betting.

"We estimate that there is a hidden, illegal market that is now worth over 10% of the legal market," Mario Lollobrigida, head of the gambling department of the Customs and Monopolies Agency, said last month.

Giovanni, a 44-year-old veterinarian who managed to break his addiction to betting on slot machines about six months ago, said the government was not doing enough to curb gambling.

“It's as if the Italian state is encouraging its citizens to gamble. There are advertisements everywhere; there are TV ads that say: 'Do you like easy wins?' It's as if they want to create a problem that they then don't know how to deal with.”

For Luciano, it took about 10 years of group therapy at SERD in Pisa – a public health center that also treats drug and alcohol addicts – to kick a habit that started when he took a flight on a train that offered free dinner at a casino.

"Every time I told myself: okay, now I'm going to go play in Monte Carlo because then I'll win back the money I lost and solve my problems. I never solved my problems; I lost everything, I even lost my dignity," he said, holding back tears.

The psychologist who treated him said that gambling leads to many broken homes.

"We have a lot of angry women and a lot of guilty men," Dr. Rosanna Cardia told Reuters.

Italians' spending on gambling has increased significantly in the last 20 years, with annual growth of more than 15% after the COVID pandemic, reaching 157.4 billion euros in 2024./Reuters/