For Italian football fans, matchday rarely starts at kick-off. It builds gradually. Team news in the morning. Group chats warming up by lunchtime. Odds checked almost without thinking, even by people who would never describe themselves as regular bettors.
Serie A has always been about ritual. The café. The bar. The radio discussion that never quite ends. What has changed is the digital layer running alongside it, shaping how tifosi fill the hours before, during, and between fixtures.
Betting as Part of the Matchday Routine
Sports betting is no longer a fringe activity in Italy. According to TGM Research, around 36% of Italians placed a sports bet in the past 12 months. Of those, 23.6% did so online or through mobile apps, with football clearly leading the way.
Regularity varies. About 20.3% of Italian sports bettors say they bet a few times a week. Another 9.4% do so monthly, while 18.1% place bets only occasionally. What stands out is how normal this has become. For many fans, betting fits neatly into the existing matchday routine rather than standing apart from it.
A small wager, placed quickly, becomes just another way of staying involved.
What Fans Say Betting Adds to the Match
When asked why they bet, Italian fans rarely point to just one reason. TGM data shows a mix of motives that feel familiar to anyone who has watched football with friends:
- 40.6% say the main draw is the chance to win money
- 34.7% describe betting as part of the emotional thrill of sport
- 32.3% say it makes watching football more engaging
One supporter quoted by an Italian sports outlet put it simply: “Sometimes the bet is tiny, but it keeps you locked in. You care about every corner and every substitution.”
The Scale Behind the Habits
These individual choices sit inside a rapidly expanding digital market. Market Research Future estimates Italy’s online gambling sector at around USD 2.85bn in 2024, rising to USD 3.13bn in 2025, with forecasts pointing to USD 8bn by 2035. That implies growth of close to 9.8% per year over the next decade.
Other industry sources tell a similar story. iGamingToday estimated Italy’s online gambling gross gaming revenue at roughly €4.5bn in 2023, with annual growth of about 5.52% projected through 2029. The market is also highly concentrated. By late 2024, Lottomatica accounted for roughly 31% of online casino GGR.
For fans, this concentration translates into familiarity. The same apps used for weekend football bets are often the ones people open during the week, whether for odds checks, live updates, or something more casual.
Between Fixtures: How Fans Fill the Gaps
Serie A schedules leave plenty of space between matches. Few fans truly switch off during those gaps.
Some dive into previews and tactical analysis. Others adjust fantasy squads or track line movements for the next round. And some simply browse through the gaming sections of platforms they already use.
Between major fixtures, many tifosi stay inside the same digital ecosystem. Alongside stats and predictions, a portion of fans drift into quick, low-effort games, often starting with demo versions rather than real-money play. That can include everything from basic slots to light-hearted titles like dog house demo slot, opened for a few spins out of curiosity rather than commitment.
It is less a change of behaviour than a shift of focus.
A complicated relationship with Gambling:
Italy’s comfort with betting has limits. High-profile scandals have kept gambling under scrutiny, especially when footballers themselves become involved.
Investigations between 2021 and 2023 linked 12 Serie A players to illegal betting activity and highlighted an underground online market estimated at close to €20bn per year, despite authorities blocking nearly 11,000 unlicensed sites. For fans, these stories reinforce a familiar tension. Betting feels normal, but trust remains fragile.
Many supporters enjoy a flutter while remaining sceptical of how easily the system can be abused.
Entertainment First, Stakes Second
For most Serie A fans, gambling remains secondary to the game itself. The bet is usually small. The purpose is emotional rather than financial.
What the data suggests is not reckless behaviour, but layered engagement. Football remains central. Betting, fantasy games, and casual online play orbit around it, filling time and sharpening interest rather than replacing the match.
For a platform like Milanreports, that context matters. Understanding how fans behave around fixtures helps explain modern support. Today’s matchday is no longer just ninety minutes on the pitch. It stretches across the week, shaped by habits that blend football, digital entertainment, and routine in ways that feel increasingly hard to separate.
