A major report in the influential International New York Times has hammered video lottery terminals (VLTs) in Italy.
The December 27 edition of the newspaper, circulated all over the world, described the machines as “dealing Italy a losing hand.”
The report is based on the small Lombardian city of Pavia with 68,300 people and one VLT for each 104 of the population. Located in coffee bars, tobacco shops, gas stations, small stores and shopping malls and 13 dedicated arcades, the VLT is blamed for chronic gambling, debt, bankruptcies, depression, domestic violence and broken homes, according to social workers.
Italy is now the largest gambling market in Europe and the fourth-largest after the US, Japan and Macau, but Lombardy has now become the sixth region to pass new legislation aimed at curbing gambling and the report stated that “dozens of municipalities have also drafted measures to limit gambling.” The report said that limiting open hours was one of the main ways authorities were clamping down on the machines.
It quoted psychologist Simon Feder, who has founded a “no-slot” protest movement in Pavia: “It is an anti-economy that impoverishes because it doesn’t spread money around; it just gobbles it up.”
But the report showed that with a weak Italian economy, gambling has shrunk in turnover along with other aspects of Italian life. Spending on gambling is projected in 2013 to reach €85.4bn (US$117bn). On average $1 in every $8 spent in Italy goes into one form of gambling or another, four times more than 15 years ago.
The Italian government, however, has come to rely upon gambling revenues, which last year reached €8.1bn and the Senate has actually punished regions and municipalities that pass anti-gambling laws by curtailing funds to them. The measure was revoked after it led to outrage.
On the plus side, the introduction of the current Italian gambling laws removed from the market between 600,000 and 800,000 illegal video poker machines which competed with government-controlled gambling, such as the lotteries. The country currently has 380,000 AWPs and 50,000 VLTs but the country only has four legal casinos. A 2012 study by the University of Rome estimated that 790,000 Italians are at risk of gabling addiction, “as defined by two internationally recognised scales that evaluate at-risk gamblers.”
This contrasts with the views of the Sistema Gioco Italian, which represents gambling companies in Italy and which reports that fewer than 7,000 Italians have been treated through state-sponsored addiction programmes.
