Edited by Joseph Malvisini

2021 was once again a challenging and complicated year for the gaming industry. The effects of the pandemic continued, certainly amid a recovery in activity, but still impacted by the difficulties and limitations facing the retail network on a daily basis.
A large network involving approximately 62.415 points of sale with a total of 73.966 direct employees and 27.466 indirect employees (source: ADM data and Confesercenti re-elaboration).
An operational impact which therefore involves a total of 233.295 people, including direct and indirect employees and the families connected to them.
Overall, this activity was impacted by approximately 344 days of closure during 2020 and 2021. This activity only resumed in July 2021, in the yellow zone first, and is still affected, to date, by the variations and restrictions that individual regions can apply based on contagion rates.

Not to be forgotten, among the last economic sectors that were able to reopen their doors.
The situation resulted in a certain loss of turnover of 1,5 billion euros in 2020, and an estimated loss of 1,8 billion for 2021.
These values ​​were only partially absorbed by the increase in online gaming operations, with €49,2 billion in collections in 2020 (according to the Blue Book of the Customs and Monopolies Agency). While, as highlighted by several parties and debated in parliamentary committees, the proceeds were channeled to illegal gaming facilities or those operating without authorization from the State Monopolies: approximately €22 billion, according to data processed by Confesercenti based on the disclosures made by the Director of the Customs and Monopolies Agency at a hearing before the Anti-Mafia Commission in March 2021.
Indeed, as stated by the Director of ADM, through the Committee for the Fight against Illegal Gaming (Copregi), interventions have been carried out in more than 50 provinces since March 2020, leading to the identification of over 200 illegal gaming halls and the imposition of fines totaling over one million euros.
This situation continues amid widespread ignorance of the importance of this distinction, especially with regard to protecting players from pathological gambling, ensuring the payment of winnings, and implementing enforcement measures, specifically in our area of ​​interest, to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.
The UIF report has once again highlighted, with an explicit change of direction, the role and importance of gaming operators, an essential bulwark in the fight against criminal infiltration and in the process of active participation, as demonstrated by data from the latest reports from the Financial Intelligence Unit:
• first half of 2020: 2.287
• second half of 2020: 3.485
Total 2020: 5.772
An activity that continues throughout 2021:
• first semester: 3.305

A year of closure, a situation that has tested the gaming operators who nevertheless continue in the
their activities: with the best wishes for a significant change of direction in the coming year