Key Points
- The government has put forward a set of amendments that include a five-year licence to operate, an additional 3% tax which will leave betting operators out of pocket, and an all-out ban on betting adverts and giveaways, which is just about as popular as you’d expect.
- To soften the blow for existing operators, they get a year to figure things out, but get one warning and they’re out of a job.
- Two Senate amendments would see betting sites being either banned outright or handed over to the lotteries, but that’s all just speculation at this stage.
The License Law That’s Taking Away the Adverts
Monday October 26 marked a significant day as Chile’s government put its hand up to propose a licensing system that would in effect shut down betting adverts for its licensed operators. Then President José Antonio Kast’s government dropped a 114-page bombshell on the Senate with a slew of amendments to a betting bill that has been floating around Congress since 2022.
The licensing package puts forward a five-year licence to operate, in addition to an extra 3% tax on top of the already hefty 19 per cent VAT. They’ve also included an annual fee. What next? Six high-ranking officials signed off on the changes, including Finance Minister Jorge Quiroz, who must have had a few late nights worrying about this one.
The next day, Finance Undersecretary Sebastián Vallebona went to the Senate Economy Committee and gave them the lowdown. Apparently, the government is trying to stop kids getting in on the action, protect punters and stump up some cash to help gamblers get their act together.
You Think You’ve Got a Chance, But Think Again
This licence thing isn’t as cut and dried as it seems, because betting operators who have been operating in Chile without a licence over the past 12 months aren’t going to be automatically handed a licence. If they’ve run a website, the government will know about it. If they’ve been advertising, or have agreements with payment providers in Chile, forget about it. If that’s the case, they’re going to have to pay a fee of 3,000 monthly tax units, roughly $219,718, and also cough up all the digital VAT they owe.
In fact, back in the day, the plan was to ask for a huge one-off payment. However, the finance ministry reckons this might be a bit dodgy and could be challenged in court.
An Extensive Advertising Ban, Excepting One Thing
These provisions may be among the most stringent in the whole draft law. Being a licence holder won’t help an operator evade the advertising ban. These restrictions will extend to unlicensed operators and everyone else associated with an advertisement. These will include persons ordering, designing, distributing or delivering the advert.
As Emol explains, a licensed operator placing ads will be committing a gross violation of the regulations and will have their licence revoked. Criminal sanctions will apply to unlicensed platforms placing ads, alongside a fine of 10 to 20 monthly tax units. The only exception will be the one-year period during which contracts signed by transitional licence holders will run. In that period too, however, the advertising will have to be done outside times meant to protect minors.
Bonus and promotional offers aimed at attracting new clients or retaining the current ones will be banned. This will apply regardless of whether the offer is advertised.
These amendments will also bring several protection measures for players. They will include safe default settings for all accounts with deposit limits and session/daily limits. Operators will also have to employ more stringent verification processes, including biometric verification. Professional athletes, technical staff, club directors and shareholders will be banned from betting in their own sport.
Trade Group Expresses Concern over Potential Negative Effects
Agrupación de iGaming Responsable welcomed the new proposals on Tuesday, 27 October but expressed worries about the advertising and bonus ban. It said that such measures might drive gamblers to unlicensed operators. “A modern regulation framework must not equate protection with prohibition,” the group explained. Also, it made its view about the issue of advertising clear. “Advertising must be regulated, not prohibited.”
Another trade group, aPAL, comprising such brands as Coolbet, Latamwin and EpicBet, refused the advertising ban too. As it sees it, regulation will provide protection for gamblers only within the regulated framework. Meanwhile, Subtel’s boss Romina Garrido informed the lawmakers on 20 October that betting operators continued changing their domains to bypass the blockage of their websites.
Senators Go Full Throttle Against the Law
While the government is proposing a licensing system that slaps on tight reins to advertising, there are two Senate texts that are taking a far tougher stance. Senators Diego Ibáñez and Gastón Saavedra, who head the Economy Committee, want to nix private operators altogether. There’s an exception for platforms registered with the tax authority, which can keep on running for up to 24 months, but they’re not allowed to advertise. According to the Senate’s bulletin, fines will be pretty steep, ranging from around $14,700 up to $73,500.
Senate president Paulina Núñez has got a different idea altogether. She wants to reserve online gambling for Polla Chilena de Beneficencia and Lotería de Concepción. That’s going to bring in some pretty serious penalties: up to 15 years in the clink in the worst cases, and fines that can get as high as 10,000 monthly tax units. And if you know someone who’s knowingly staked their cash at an unlicensed site more than three times in the space of 90 days, they can expect to be fined between 2 and 20 monthly tax units. “The State can’t just become a tax partner in a problem that it’s actually supposed to be sorting out,” she said.
Saavedra has been pretty clear about his own position on things: “If there isn’t a will to actually regulate this, then just outright ban it”. But then, just a month later, on 8 September, he teamed up with senators Matías Walker and Ricardo Celis to ask for a licensing system after all, including a specific tax and a requirement for beneficial owners to come forward. Five weeks on, he’d flipped back to supporting a ban again instead.
The Senate did manage to pass the bill in general on 13 August 2025, with a fairly straightforward vote of 27 for, three against and five abstaining.
Tax Register and Blocking Orders Clash
While the politicians are still arguing the details, the courts and regulators have already been getting on with things. By 1 September, the telecoms regulator Subtel told the internet providers to block 42 whole gambling sites within 48 hours. That was all down to a Supreme Court decision and a ruling from the Santiago Court of Appeal in a case brought by Lotería de Concepción. And the good news is that Subtel can go back to that well anytime it finds a new domain and mirror site that the casino regulator has validated.
By 20 October, Subtel said it was covering 143 sites, a big jump from the 79 sites across two letters it issued in September. Some of the operators aren’t happy, and there’s been one lawsuit, three court challenges and six administrative appeals filed as a result.
At the same time, 39 betting platforms are registered with the tax authority, all of which are paying a 19 per cent digital VAT. Just to clarify, this registration doesn’t actually give them permission to run a gambling service. Senators are scratching their heads over the apparent contradiction between raking in the cash from these platforms and ordering their websites to be blocked. The agency reckons it’ll be making more than $100 million from the first quarterly payment, which was due in October.
The trade body president Sandra Kemp summed up the whole mess nicely in September. “Look, at the end of the day, the state is just mucking about with patches when what we really need is a proper law,” she told NEXT.io.
It’s also pretty hard to pin down the size of Chile’s online gambling market. One industry-commissioned study by Yield Sec reckoned that 5.4 million Chileans had interacted with online gambling content by the end of 2024.
What Comes Next?
On 27 October, the Senate Economy Committee started working on the bill. After the discussion in the Finance Committee, the draft will be voted upon by the senators. According to the Senate record as of 20 October, there is no urgent status for this piece of legislation. There is a sponsor and some support for a licensed market, a ban and a monopoly for the lotteries in the Senate. Nothing has passed into law, therefore, current rules and website-blocking orders remain valid.
Expert Analysis: Can a Licence Survive Without a Voice?
Firstly, we must draw our attention to the advertising ban. It can weaken the very system of licences that the government tries to implement. An advertised brand that will not be able to advertise will still have to compete with the known offshore gambling sites. This issue was raised by industry associations, and officials agreed that blocked sites pop up with different addresses. Proponents of the ban say that advertising promotes gambling problems and deserves a serious discussion.
Secondly, we want to speak about the transitional route. It replaces the one-time 31 per cent tax with a payment of 3,000 monthly tax units. We believe that it will be cheaper for a big operator, and proponents of a ban will try to show the difference between these two options. The constitutional argument of the ministry in opposition to the tax was reasonable. Nevertheless, senators need to make a decision on whether operators that worked without licences should get an advantage in obtaining one.
Lastly, the government tries to collect taxes, block websites and provide licences all at once. Change in Saavedra’s position from sponsorship of the bill for licences to a ban in just five weeks can mean that the proposed ban is also a tool of leverage. We cannot prove that assumption because the documents only show his change of position.
Now everything depends on the answer to one question: will the senators support a market of licences that cannot be advertised, or will they choose a ban that proved to be difficult to enforce?
Share
6 views
