Another 190 gambling websites are about to become unreachable in Italy. The country’s Customs and Monopolies Agency registered a blocking order on Aug. 5 covering domains it says operate without the authorization required to serve Italian players, and internet service providers have until Aug. 20 to implement the blocks.
The order uses the existing enforcement system rather than creating anything new. Under Article 102 of Decree-Law 104/2020, ADM can order internet providers to restrict access to websites offering or advertising gambling outside Italy’s rules, and the 190 domains join the agency’s long-running blacklist. Publication on ADM’s website counts as formal notification, so ISPs are expected to monitor the list themselves instead of waiting for individual orders.
Italians who try to visit a listed domain are redirected to an ADM page stating that the website lacks authorization to offer gambling in the country. Since April, ADM has been moving that blocking system from a static IP address to a dedicated HTTPS page used for the same warning.
The blacklist stood at 11,825 after a January update and passed 12,000 in April, when another 112 websites were added. July brought a further 293 domains, with one restored, for a total of 12,448 at the time; the newest 190 push the count past 12,600. Domains are also restored or replaced between updates, so ADM’s consolidated list remains the only authoritative number. Polymarket returned to the list in July as well, after previously restricting Italian users to viewing markets rather than trading on them.
Several domains connected to Russian bookmaker Fonbet appear in the latest batch. Fonbet.com, Fonbet.info, and Fonbetpoker.com were already blocked in the previous round, so the new order catches fonbet-italy.com, fonbet001.com, and fonbet003.com instead. Numbered replacement domains, prepared before the original is even blocked, show the obvious weakness of this kind of enforcement: an operator can move users to a new address faster than a regulator can work through a blacklist.
Fonbet has received separate attention in Italy over its sponsorship relationship with former national team midfielder Andrea Pirlo. The blacklist has nothing to do with that controversy. Inclusion concerns whether a website is authorized to offer gambling in Italy, not the legality of the sponsorship agreement or anything about Pirlo himself.
Blocking does not shut the underlying businesses down. The websites remain online everywhere else, and registering a new domain costs next to nothing. The measure stops ordinary Italian internet connections from reaching the listed addresses, which makes it harder for unauthorized operators to compete openly with companies paying for Italian concessions.
Italy introduced a new licensing regime in late 2025 that sharply reduced the number of concessions and imposed stricter technical and compliance requirements on the operators that remained. The expanding blacklist is the other half of that policy. Licensed companies accepted higher barriers to enter the market, and the regulator is now under pressure to make those licenses worth something by restricting the competitors that ignored them.