Italian authorities shut down two illegal betting centres in Agrigento and seized terminals that bypassed PREU

Authorities in Agrigento closed two clandestine betting collection centres and issued administrative fines exceeding €20,000 ($22,796) after coordinated checks across 14 betting shops and gaming halls. For PSPs and gambling operators, the useful part is simple: Italy is still enforcing the difference between licensed collection points and terminals that sit outside the national gaming network.

1. The operation was announced on Friday and carried out by the Italian customs and gambling regulator (ADM) together with the Guardia di Finanza (GdF). Inspectors from ADM’s Sicily 6 office in Porto Empedocle and provincial GdF units checked venues in Agrigento, Favara, Raffadali, Palma di Montechiaro, Campobello di Licata, Ribera and the Pelagie Islands.
2. Two premises were found operating as unlicensed betting collection centres. At one site in Porto Empedocle, officers seized two computer terminals that were not connected to the national gaming collection network and did not have the required identification codes.
3. That setup mattered because disconnecting the terminals from the network allowed them to bypass the counters used to record stakes and plays. In ADM’s framing, that created a route to evade the single national gaming levy (PREU), which is tied to recorded turnover on gaming devices.
4. The device seizure led to criminal referrals. The business owner linked to the Porto Empedocle premises was reported to the public prosecutor in Agrigento on suspicion of illegal betting operations.
5. The enforcement action lands in the middle of a broader Italian gambling stalemate. At a Senate hearing last month, EGP-FIPE said repeated extensions of national gambling concessions had stalled the legal market, left the sector “frozen,” and weakened network planning and problem-gambling safeguards. Its point was blunt: when the physical channel is tightly constrained, play moves online or underground, where control is nil.

The same month, the Italian parliament’s new bill introduced in the Senate proposed a 2% levy on all domestic football bets placed within Italy, both in physical betting shops and online. The levy would apply to matches organised by the Italian Football Federation and its affiliated professional and amateur leagues, and would be set at 2% of the stake per bet.