The 5 Star Movement and the Democratic Party criticized the approval of the resolution in the committee. According to them, the resolution would not contribute to combat the phenomenon of ludopathy, or gambling-related disorders. The parties that support the government, in particular Fratelli d’Italia, defended the resolution, saying that it will help reform the rules of football, including those on sports betting, in the best possible way.

What are we talking about
The resolution approved by the Senate Culture Committee is the result of in-depth work conducted by the same committee, which began in February of last year. According to the Senate regulations, in addition to examining bills, committees can investigate certain issues and then approve a final resolution. The latter does not have the value of a law, but is a document that commits the government to intervene on the subject according to a series of guidelines contained in the resolution itself.

With regard to football reform, in a year of work the Senate Culture Committee has listened to various entities in the sector, including the men's Serie A football league and the Serie B league, some professional teams, and the associations that represent Italian referees.

At the end of the in-depth work, the committee drafted the text of the resolution that was approved and which contains, among other things, the request to the government to "evaluate the modification" of article 9 of the decree-law of 12 July 2018, n. 87, i.e. the "Dignity" decree approved by the first Conte government. This article banned "any form of advertising, even indirect, relating to games or bets with cash prizes" carried out on any means of communication and during sporting, artistic or cultural events. 

The commercials "today take you to an online poker portal where you can spend the whole day gambling away all the family savings that were used to pay for your children's school or university. This is a system that needs to be changed completely", declared at the time the then Minister of Labour and Economic Development Luigi Di Maio, the main promoter of the decree.

The ban immediately sparked controversy among operators in the sector, according to whom the crackdown on gambling would have favored illegal gambling, and among Serie A teams, which had to interrupt important sponsorship contracts with sports betting companies.

In any case, the "Dignity" decree has been in force for almost seven years, but the content regarding gambling at multiple levels is still present in our media and the ban on advertising for sports betting is often circumvented.

What the resolution on gambling says
The resolution approved by the Senate committee calls on the government to change the rules of the “Dignity” decree on gambling, precisely because these rules have often been unapplied. From this point of view, the resolution does not explicitly provide for the elimination of the ban on advertising betting sites.

In the text of the resolution, we read that the committee commits the government to “evaluate the opportunity to allocate an annual share of the proceeds from sports games and sports betting to the organizers of the events on which bets are placed,” in practice to sports clubs and organizers of football championships.

More specifically, the resolution provides for the possibility for the government to allocate at least 1 percent of the proceeds from sports betting “to a fund for the construction of new stadiums and the modernization of old ones.” In addition, it gives the possibility of recognizing "an additional quota" for the financing of specific social and sports projects and training of young people within sports clubs, provided that they are "in favor of youth sectors, sports facilities, as well as women's football", the fight against gambling addiction and phenomena of abuse, violence and discrimination against athletes.

Other proposals on football reform 
The resolution proposed other interventions for a reform of the Italian football sector. These are not detailed proposals, they are more of a series of invitations to the government to intervene on specific issues.

For example, according to the resolution, the government should commit to "promoting public investments and measures to attract private capital for the modernization of obsolete sports facilities and the construction of new facilities", introducing tax breaks for investments in sports facilities and creating "a control room" chaired by the Minister of Sport and Youth, with the active participation of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and with the involvement of representatives of local authorities.

In addition, the resolution calls on the government to reform the rules on the commercialization of audiovisual rights; promote the development of the women's football sector by establishing a League for women's football, with its own management, administrative and financial autonomy; give full legal and contractual recognition to referees and introduce the possibility for Serie A teams to sign contracts with players other than subordinate employment contracts. Within six months of the approval of the resolution, i.e. by 5 September 2025, the government must send a report to the competent parliamentary committees to account for the legislative initiatives and measures to implement the commitments contained in the resolution itself.

While the parties supporting the government criticized the resolution, especially for the call to change the rules on gambling, those on the center-right defended the document. "No one is in favor of gambling addiction, but we, as legislators, must take note of what has worked and what has not given the desired results", declared for example the senator of Fratelli d'Italia Paolo Marcheschi, rapporteur of the resolution. "We insisted that the part of the resolution that, in fact, circumvents the bans on advertising and sponsorship of betting in football be removed, but evidently the betting issue, with the related economic revenues, was too important for the majority", said instead the leader of the PD group in the Senate Francesco Boccia.