Italy's communications regulator, AGCOM, has opened a public consultation that tries to do something genuinely hard: define, in operational terms, where lawful 'informational' messaging about gambling ends and prohibited promotion begins. The consultation — launched through Delibera 85/26/CONS — runs for 30 days and explicitly drags platform-mediated channels into scope: odds-change notifications, bonuses, loyalty schemes, affiliate marketing, and influencer partnerships. AGCOM frames these as potential loopholes around the near-total advertising ban Italy enacted in 2018. A finalised framework is expected before the summer.
The underlying statute is the Dignity Decree (Decree-Law No. 87/2018). Article 9 imposed one of Europe's most sweeping prohibitions: a blanket ban on advertising games and bets with cash prizes, covering direct and indirect commercial communication, including sponsorship. The new wrinkle is that Legislative Decree No. 41/2024, reorganising the gaming sector, carved out space for prevention and awareness messaging — and even requires licensed operators to run responsible-gambling campaigns. That created the structural tension AGCOM is now trying to manage: how do you mandate that a bookmaker speak about responsible gambling while forbidding it from advertising?
The regulator's case is real
The strongest version of AGCOM's position deserves to be stated plainly, because it is not frivolous. Italy spends extraordinary sums on gambling — roughly €157 billion wagered in 2024, according to figures reported by US News, with the state collecting about €11.5 billion in gambling taxes that year. Problem-gambling harm is concentrated, real, and falls hardest on people least able to absorb it. A ban that prohibits banner ads but tolerates an 'odds update' push notification, a streamer's affiliate code, or a 'VIP loyalty' email is a ban with a side door. If 'informational' becomes a magic word that re-legalises promotion through platform features, the 2018 prohibition is hollowed out without Parliament ever voting to weaken it. AGCOM is right that the line has to be drawn somewhere, and that affiliates and influencers are precisely where modern gambling marketing actually lives.
The consultation reflects that. Per analysis by the firm DLA Piper's GamingTechLaw, AGCOM's governing principle is that responsible-gambling communication 'is not advertising — provided it contains no promotional element': no call-to-action, no references to bonuses, odds, or winnings, no gaming-interface visuals, no links to platforms, and only restrained use of operator logos. The act reaches beyond licensees to publishers, event organisers, and — in the version associations are lobbying for — influencers, testimonials, and creative agencies.
Where proportionality starts to strain
Here is our concern. Italy is building an ever more elaborate enforcement scaffold on top of a prohibition whose compatibility with EU law is, right now, an open question before the Court of Justice.
In Case C-194/25, LeoVegas Gaming plc v AGCOM, the Italian Council of State referred the Dignity Decree's ad ban to the CJEU (request lodged 11 March 2025), asking whether a blanket prohibition on gambling advertising is proportionate and coherent with EU free-movement principles. The referral followed AGCOM sanctions against licensed operators. Until Luxembourg rules, every additional layer of definitional rule-making is being poured over a foundation that may have to be re-laid.
The enforcement record also shows how blunt instruments produce arbitrary outcomes. In February 2026, AGCOM dismissed proceedings against the streaming platform Kick, accepting that the disputed gambling content was user-generated by an Italian streamer with no commercial arrangement, and that Kick acted as a 'mere hosting provider' — the classic intermediary-liability safe harbour now embedded in the EU Digital Services Act. That outcome was correct. But it underscores that the hard cases turn on whether a platform is a passive host or an active promoter — a DSA question — not on whether a notification is formally 'informational.' Bolting a content-classification regime onto platforms risks pressuring them to over-remove lawful speech to stay clear of liability, the precise chilling effect intermediary-liability law was designed to prevent.
A proportionate path
None of this argues for a free-for-all. It argues for sequencing and precision. Three principles should guide the final framework:
- Target conduct, not vocabulary. The meaningful distinction is whether a message induces a transaction — a bonus offer, a deposit prompt, an affiliate revenue-share — not whether it is labelled 'informational.' Functional, behaviour-based tests resist gaming better than semantic categories that invite exactly the loophole-hunting AGCOM fears.
- Keep platform liability tethered to the DSA. Italy should not improvise a parallel notice-and-takedown standard for gambling content. The DSA already allocates responsibility between hosts and bad actors; the Kick case shows it works.
- Wait for Luxembourg on the core ban. Finalising granular rules before C-194/25 is decided risks an expensive rewrite — and signals to operators and platforms that compliance targets are unstable.
The goal everyone shares — fewer people harmed by predatory gambling marketing — is legitimate and urgent. But proportionality is not a footnote to that goal; in EU law it is the test the measure must pass. A consultation that genuinely engages affiliates, platforms, and proportionality, rather than treating 'informational' as a binary switch, is the version worth finalising. The version that races ahead of the Court is not.