Chile Senators Back a Gambling Ban Over Licensed Betting

Chile looks set to outlaw private online betting instead of licensing it. Senators on the Senate Economy Committee voted three to one, with one abstention, to approve two amendments on 9 November, and each one would move Chile toward a gambling ban covering every private operator. Committee chair Gastón Saavedra said he will merge the two texts at the next session.

The sequence is what stings for the government. President José Antonio Kast’s administration presented its licensing framework in October, complete with five-year permits and a full tax structure, and the committee swept it aside without ever debating the model on its merits. Deputy Finance Minister Sebastián Vallebona said lawmakers had lost the chance to discuss regulation built around protecting families and keeping minors away from betting sites. He called prohibition the worst available path.

What the Committee Approved

The two amendments walk Chile into a gambling ban from different directions, and the penalties are where they separate. Senate President Paulina Núñez and fellow National Renewal senator María José Gatica wrote the first one. It rules out a private licensing market and reserves online play for the state lotteries, while handing courts the power to block illegal betting sites permanently.

Payment services and advertising tied to unauthorised gambling would face restrictions of their own. Penalties climb steeply in the worst cases, with aggravated offences carrying up to 15 years in prison and fines reaching 10,000 monthly tax units. Aggravating factors include deliberately targeting minors and continuing to operate after a final blocking order. For any operator that ignores a court, the exposure shifts from commercial risk to criminal liability.

A Second Text With Longer Reach

Saavedra and Broad Front senator Diego Ibáñez drafted the second amendment, and its scope decides how far Chile could push a gambling ban past its own borders. The text prohibits operating, offering and advertising online betting platforms. Any platform that accepts a wager from a customer inside the country counts as operating there, no matter where its servers or domain sit.

Exemptions carve out the state lottery Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, Lotería de Concepción, authorised racetracks and land-based casinos. Prison terms run from 541 days to five years for operators who profit from prohibited betting, with fines of 200 to 1,000 monthly tax units on top. Internet providers, app stores and payment companies pick up blocking duties, which moves enforcement onto intermediaries. Ibáñez pointed to the Supreme Court ruling that declared the business illegal and ordered online betting houses closed, which gives the amendment a judicial precedent to lean on.

The Licensing Plan Left on the Table

The framework the committee bypassed would have opened the market to licensed operators on five-year terms. Tax treatment included 19% VAT on the difference between stakes and prizes paid out, with an extra 3% levy on top and a set of player protection requirements attached. Months of industry preparation had assumed Chile would license operators rather than impose a gambling ban.

Independent senator Matías Walker argued against prohibition on practical grounds. Chile gains little from a gambling ban, he said, because it rewards the companies that never wanted to regularise or pay anything to the state in the first place. Senator Manuel José Ossandón pushed back on a different point, rejecting the suggestion that colleagues who back prohibition have closed their eyes to gambling harm.

Industry Questions Whether the Vote Was Valid

The Agrupación de iGaming Responsable attacked the substance and the procedure together. Prohibition creates a monopoly, strips out competition and pushes players toward illegal operators, the association argued, which would leave Chile supervising the market less effectively under a gambling ban than under licences. It also questioned whether the amendments are admissible under Senate rules at all, noting that the committee’s own secretary raised that warning before the vote.

The objection lands on top of a contradiction nobody has resolved. Dozens of operators have registered and paid VAT since July, even though a Supreme Court ruling requires unlicensed betting sites to be blocked. AGR president Sandra Kemp called the arrangement a patch applied where a law should be, and a Chile that settles on a gambling ban would keep taxing companies it refuses to recognise.

Where Chile Takes a Gambling Ban Next

Saavedra will merge the two amendments at the committee’s next session. The combined text then moves to the Senate Finance Committee before returning to the full chamber for a vote. Chile will not settle the gambling ban question inside one committee, since the Chamber of Deputies has already approved the broader bill and the Senate passed it in principle.

Nothing is final while the text travels between committees, and the Finance Committee may read the amendments very differently. The direction has still changed. Chile spent years heading toward a licensed and taxed online market, and a gambling ban now sits at the centre of what senators will vote on. Operators that registered with the tax authority in good faith now wait to learn what that decision bought them.