Let’s not sugar-coat it: on 13 November 2025, Italy pressed the nuclear button on its online gambling market. The old Wild West of 400+ domains, endless white-label skins and operators hiding behind 47 different URLs is dead. In its place: exactly 52 licensed domains, 46 operators, and a €7 million ticket price per concession until 2034.
Welcome to the most ruthlessly rationalised regulated market Europe has ever seen.

One Operator, One Domain – No Exceptions, No Mercy

The core rule is brutally simple: one concession = one .it domain. Finished are the days when a single licence could spawn a galaxy of secondary brands, microsites and affiliate bait. The ADM (Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli), led by Roberto Alesse, has effectively capped the Italian online gambling universe at 52 active URLs.
For context, that’s fewer live sites than the Netherlands had at launch in 2021 – in a country with almost four times the population and a GGR that still flirts with €4 billion a year. Density-wise, Italy just became the European equivalent of the UK market circa 2014… except the barrier to entry is now €7 million upfront instead of a £2,000 remote licence.

Unified Licence, Total Accountability

The new concessions are genuinely omni-vertical: sports betting, casino, live casino, poker, bingo, virtuals, skill games – everything under the same roof. No more juggling five separate licences like in some schizophrenic jurisdictions.
The upside? Less regulatory arbitrage.
The downside? Screw up on any vertical and you risk the entire concession. Accountability just went vertical.

Technical & RG Obligations That Actually Hurt

  • KYC on steroids – SPID (the Italian digital ID) is now the default verification path. Faster for legit players, absolute hell for bonus abusers and money-launderers.
  • Self-exclusion 2.0 – Until 31 January 2026 only full exclusion exists. From February you’ll get granular, vertical-specific blocks. Very few markets (Sweden comes closest) offer this level of player control without forcing total abstinence.
  • AML muscle – Italy never forgot its history with organised crime. Enhanced transaction monitoring and source-of-funds checks are now table stakes.

Marketing in the Dignità Straitjacket Just Got Harder

The 2018 Dignità Decree already banned almost all direct advertising. Losing skins kills the last remaining loophole: SEO juice from dozens of secondary domains.
Every operator is now forced to rebuild their acquisition funnel from a single URL in a country where you can’t buy a TV spot, sponsor a jersey, or even run a Google Ads campaign without jumping through flaming hoops.
Sound familiar? Dutch operators went through the same pain in 2021-22. The difference: the Netherlands never had the Dignità advertising ban. Italy is basically the Netherlands on hard mode.

New Market Map: 46 Players, Three Distinct Castes

1. Domestic omnichannel titans (untouchable)

Sisal, Lottomatica, Snaitech (Playtech), Eurobet, Goldbet, SKS365 (Planetwin365), Admiral.
These brands still have thousands of retail points feeding their online pipelines. In a marketing-blackout world, physical presence = oxygen.

2. International scale players (adapting fast)

bet365, Entain (Eurobet/bwin), Flutter (Sisal Matchpoint, Betfair, PokerStars), 888, LeoVegas, Betsson.
Deep pockets, best-in-class product, but they’re discovering that pure tech scale doesn’t fully compensate when you can’t shout about it.

3. Niche newcomers with a specific angle

  • Winamax (poker + sports creativity)
  • Stake.com (crypto-friendly, global brand heat)
  • Greentube/Novomatic (slots firepower)
  • Tombola (bingo pure-play)
  • Casino di Sanremo & Venezia (heritage prestige play)

That’s it. 46 names. No more.

Winamax Watch: The Most Fascinating Launch That Hasn’t Happened Yet

Winamax secured a full-vertical licence but has until May 2026 to go live. Smart. They get to watch the market settle, rebuild their SEO architecture from scratch, and launch into a landscape where literally everyone else is bleeding traffic from the skin purge. Sportsbook will be tough –  margins are tight and the incumbents are entrenched.
Poker is where the real story hides. Italy still runs ring-fenced liquidity, but the local player pool is large and sophisticated. If Winamax can transplant even half of its French community magic, it instantly becomes top-3.Casino? Historically not their thing. But ignoring a vertical that represents ~70% of Italian online GGR would be commercial suicide. Expect either a white-label partnership or a surprisingly heavy push.

TL;DR

Italy just built the most concentrated, highest-barrier, cleanest regulated online gambling market in Europe. Call it the anti-Sweden: where Stockholm went for open competition and endless licences, Rome chose oligopoly and control.For operators: entry is now an eight-figure decision requiring genuine long-term commitment.
For affiliates and media: the SEO battlefield is reset to zero – first-mover advantage on the new 52 domains is enormous.

For players: fewer choices, but a dramatically safer and more professional environment.
By 2030, Italy could very well be the most profitable per-capita regulated market on the continent – provided you’re one of the 46 allowed to play.
The rest of Europe is watching closely. Because when Italy decides to clean house, it doesn’t do half-measures.

Disclaimer: This article and its accompanying images may have been enhanced using AI tools to ensure smoother content delivery and visual appeal.

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