HOW IMPORTANT IS GAMBLING IN NATIONAL GDP: CASE STUDY FROM AUSTRIA, CROATIA, ITALY AND SLOVENIA

Purpose – The situation in the field of gambling is changing due to the rise of Internet and Mobilegambling. In general gambling consumption is increasing every year, but the distribution ofconsumption has radically changed from Land Based gambling to Remote gambling. The purposeof this article is to present an overview of the world gambling industry and a specific overviewin Austria, Croatia, Italy and Slovenia in order to find some main similarities and differences inobserved period.Design/Methodology/Approach – The main research question is How important is gambling for theinvolved countries and what proportion of the national GDP does the gambling revenue accountfor? This paper presents the analysis of five statistical databases for the last sixteen years in orderto find out some patterns, cyclical or seasonal features or other significant information that allowsus to do forecasting of the future revenue with a certain degree of accuracy. We have systematicallysearched and collected data from the World Bank and the National Statistical Offices websites ofthe given countries. Statistical methods were used for benchmark analysis, while Box and Jenkinsapproach and ARIMA modelling were used for forecasting.Findings – The smallest increase was recorded in Slovenia and the largest in Italy. The same effectswere also observed in the GDP of these countries. Thus, the state budgets of Croatia and Italy areincreasingly dependent on gambling taxes. It also has negative wages. The gambling addictionsamong the locals have become more frequent as well.Originality of the research – The article shows the forecasts of the gambling revenue and its sharein the GDP by 2027. We want to alert decision makers to adopt appropriate policies. States needto rethink their views on gambling and the excessive dependence of the state budget on gamblingtaxes. This is the first time a single comparative analysis of these countries and the above mentionedforecast has been conducted