Chile Senate Committee Backs Online Betting Ban Over Licensing Model

The Senate Economy Committee has approved two whole-text amendments that would turn Chile's online betting licensing bill into a prohibition. It was a committee vote of three to one, not a floor vote, but it puts the ban ahead of the government's 22% tax plan inside the committee writing the law.

• Chile's Senate Economy Committee on Monday approved two amendments that would replace online betting bill Boletín 14.838-03 with a ban on private platforms, by three votes to one with one abstention, according to La Tercera and BioBioChile
• The amendments are the substitute texts filed in October by senators Diego Ibáñez and Gastón Saavedra and by Senate president Paulina Núñez, not separate bills, and the full Senate has not voted on them
• The Ibáñez and Saavedra text carries prison terms of 541 days to five years and makes internet providers, app stores and payment firms block platforms within five days of notice from the casino regulator
• The vote cuts against the government's own amendments, which would license operators, tax them at an effective 22% and ban all betting advertising
• Saavedra, who chairs the committee, said the two texts will be merged at the next session, expected the following week, and the bill must still pass the Finance Committee and the floor

A Licensing Bill Turns Into a Ban in Committee

The committee met in the former National Congress building in Santiago from 17:08 to 18:19 on Monday 9 November, according to the Senate's session record, to continue voting the amendments to the bill with Undersecretary of Finance Sebastián Vallebona invited. The recorded agreement is to continue at a future session. The individual votes do not appear in the record.

BioBioChile reported that the committee first declared the two substitutes admissible, with three votes in favour, after the secretariat warned that they departed from the bill's core idea by proposing prohibition rather than regulation. They were then approved by three votes to one with one abstention. The committee's members are Saavedra, Ibáñez, Ricardo Celis, Carlos Ignacio Kuschel and Matías Walker, according to the Senate. CNN Chile named Manuel José Ossandón of Renovación Nacional (RN), with Ibáñez and Saavedra, among those backing the ban.

The Ibáñez and Saavedra text, set out in the Senate's amendments bulletin, prohibits developing, operating, offering, brokering or advertising any platform that takes bets from Chile, wherever its servers or domain sit. It exempts Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, Lotería de Concepción, licensed racecourses and casinos licensed under Law 19.995. Breaches for profit carry 541 days to five years in prison and fines of 200 to 1,000 UTM, approximately $14,800 to $74,000. Platforms registered with the tax authority, the SII, could keep operating for up to 24 months without advertising, with no new accounts from the 18th month.

Núñez's substitute reserves online gambling to the two state lotteries and carries up to 15 years in prison and fines of up to 10,000 UTM in aggravated cases, with permanent blocking ordered by a judge.

Senators Split Over Whether to Regulate or Prohibit

"Times have changed and we have seen a significant rise in gambling addiction," Saavedra said, according to T13 (translations from the Spanish are ours). Ibáñez told G5noticias that "while prohibiting will not eliminate them 100%, it does make access harder". Walker opposed the ban: "The first clause talks about regulating and then about prohibiting. I think prohibiting is the worst path," he said, according to BioBioChile, which reported that he argued a ban would favour operators that never sought a licence or paid tax.

Vallebona defended the government's text and said rejecting it would mean voting against protecting children from gambling addiction, BioBioChile reported. That text, filed by President José Antonio Kast on 26 October, would also set a floor of 60,000 UTM, approximately $4.4 million, on the resources of a new gambling addiction prevention and treatment fund during the three budget years after the law is published.

The Committee Has Chosen a Side Before the Government's Text Was Voted

The bill was approved in general by the full Senate in August 2025 as a licensing framework, and the government's own amendments, more than 170 of the 853 in the latest bulletin, still assume a licensed market. By approving the whole-text substitutes first, the committee has put prohibition at the centre of its second report. Chile's constitution only admits amendments with a direct link to a bill's core ideas, and the secretariat's warning gives the government a procedural argument it may use on the floor.

A Ban Would Rest on Machinery That Already Leaks

The texts rely on the blocking tools Chile is already using: Subtel's orders to internet providers, which mirror sites have repeatedly sidestepped, and the financial regulator's push on card payments. The Ibáñez and Saavedra definition also covers bets on "forecasts" and any future, uncertain event, wording that would appear to reach prediction markets too. A ban gives up the licence fees and the 22% tax the government is counting on, and gives players no licensed alternative.

A three-to-one committee vote is not a law, and the Finance Committee, the floor and the Chamber of Deputies still stand between it and the statute book. But the committee has moved the starting point of Chile's negotiation from how to license online betting to whether to allow it at all.