2026 VIS – Gabelli’s Gustavo Pifano On The Gaming Industry And A Few Industry Stocks Poised To Win

Gustavo Pifano, assistant vice president of research and co-portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds in London discussed several stocks at the 2026 Value Investing Seminar in Italy. Pifano joined Gabelli in 2008 and has covered small-cap industrials and consumer names ever since, co-managing mandates that include the Gabelli Equity Trust and the Gabelli International Small Cap Fund. He holds a BBA in finance from the University of Miami and an MBA from the University of Oxford. His presentation focused on three distinct but related themes: the opportunity in US online sports betting, a second gaming idea in a specific stock, and the mechanics and current attractiveness of merger arbitrage as a strategy.

The US Gaming Market After PASPA

Pifano noted the favorable macro backdrop for US gaming, stating that the American gaming market has grown into an $80 billion industry, nearly double its size since the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018. That legislation, known as PASPA, had effectively confined sports betting to Nevada. Once it fell, states moved quickly to regulate. As of the presentation, 40 states plus Washington DC had legalized sports betting, 7 states offered iGaming, and online gross gaming revenue exceeded $27 billion. A handful of states had still not legalized, Pifano noted, and those holdouts represent the remaining runway for market expansion.