Chile Senators Want to Ban Online Gambling, Not License It

Chile spent four years building a legal route to online gambling, and that work now faces two proposals that would erase it. The government filed its amendment package on October 26, backing five-year licences for private operators. Senators answered with rival texts that would either outlaw private platforms completely, criminal penalties included, or hand the entire sector over to the two state lotteries. More than 500 amendments reached the Senate before the deadline closed.

The bill first went to Congress in 2022 and has survived three administrations since then. Senators approved it in general terms in August 2025 by 27 votes to three, with five abstentions, which pushed it into a second constitutional review where committees rework the detail clause by clause. That review is where the fight sits now.

How Chile Would License Online Gambling Operators

Under the government plan, Chile would open online gambling to licensed private companies on five-year terms, with each operator paying an annual fee of 1,000 monthly tax units, currently worth around $77,000. The tax structure adds 19% VAT on the gap between stakes and winnings, plus a separate 3% gambling levy. Operators would also apply default deposit caps and playing-time limits across every account.

Marketing takes the heaviest hit. Advertising and promotional bonuses would both disappear, which strips out the acquisition tools operators normally lean on when a new market opens. Companies that ran unlicensed in Chile during the previous year would be locked out of online gambling licences altogether unless they reach a transitional arrangement with authorities.

The Agrupación de iGaming Responsable, which represents operators pushing for regulation, welcomed the progress but drew a hard line at the advertising ban. Its president Sandra Kemp has argued for years that the current legal vacuum damages minors, adult players, the state and the platforms themselves at the same time. “Failing to legislate is the worst of all the available options,” she said.

Two Senators Push for Full Prohibition

Diego Ibáñez and Gastón Saavedra went the opposite direction. Their amendment would bar anyone in Chile from developing, operating, managing, offering, brokering or advertising online gambling platforms, directly or indirectly. The wording catches offshore companies too, because a platform counts as active in the country the moment it accepts a bet from a user inside it, regardless of where its servers or corporate offices sit.

Enforcement would carry criminal weight. Operators already registered with the tax authority would get up to 24 months to wind down their activities, and breaching the ban after that could bring prison terms of six months to three years alongside fines. For companies that have spent years preparing licence applications, an exit timetable would replace the business plan.

A State-Only Alternative

Senator Núñez put forward a third path, one that leaves Chile with a legal online gambling market run entirely by the state. Only Polla Chilena de Beneficencia and Lotería de Concepción could offer online products, and both would stay limited to the games they already run today. Nothing new would launch under that model.

The proposal pairs its monopoly with sharper enforcement. Permanent website blocking would replace case-by-case court orders, while fines climb for illegal operators and for the companies that advertise them. Players who knowingly use illegal sites three or more times within 90 days would face penalties too. Land-based casinos and horse racing would sit outside all of it.

Blocked Sites and Taxed Operators at Once

Chile already enforces against unlicensed online gambling while collecting money from the same companies. In September, telecoms regulator Subtel ordered internet providers to block 42 gambling websites following court decisions. Meanwhile 39 offshore betting sites have registered with the tax authority under separate rules requiring foreign digital platforms to pay 19% VAT on transactions.

That contradiction gives the pro-regulation camp its strongest argument. The state treats the same operators as taxpayers and as enforcement targets, because no dedicated law exists to settle which one they are. Kemp has described the approach as a patch applied where a law should be.

What the Committee Decides Next

The Senate’s Economy Committee now has to work through the competing texts, and Finance Minister Jorge Quiroz was invited to defend the government’s position at an October 27 session. Committee members are not weighing small variations on one framework. They are picking between three completely different markets.

Regional timing makes that harder. Brazil suspended licensed online betting on October 6, and Buenos Aires Province is examining proposals that include prohibition and tighter safeguards. Chile’s lawmakers are deciding on online gambling at the moment the regional mood turned against it, which hands the ban amendments political cover they would not have had a year ago.

The outcome remains open. Government negotiators still hold the advantage of a bill built around their own licensing model. But the amendments now on the table aim to replace it rather than refine it, and the committee’s next moves decide what future Chile gives online gambling.