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Argentina’s province of Mendoza has finally announced its long-awaited list of successful online gambling licence applicants, accepting five of the ten applications.
Applicants were required to be based in Mendoza and operate via a dot.ar web address. As such, four of the five licensees are partnerships between local companies and international enterprises. The fifth, Codere Argentina, is a local division of international operator Codere.
The winning bidders are: Rush Street Interactive with Sucursal Argentina and Desarrollos Maipú; Codere Online Argentina; Traylon SA with Ondiss; Boldt with Fuente Mayor; and Impresora Internacional de Valores (IVISA) with Hotelera Emprender.
Ondiss and Traylon are local companies that will be managing the BetWarrior site. Boldt and Fuente Mayor together will manage the Bplay site. IVISA and Hotelera Emprender will manage Super 7.
Mendoza’s tender had a limited number of licences available, like the province of Buenos Aires and the province of Cordoba, and unlike the city of Buenos Aires, where licences are not limited. The province made it known at the beginning of the licensing process that only two to seven licences would be awarded.
Rush Street Interactive, Boldt, IVISA, Codere and BetWarrior have also been awarded licences in the recently regulated but not yet live province of Cordoba.
Boldt's Bplay and BetWarrior are active in the province of Buenos Aires, while Codere, Bplay, BetWarrior and Super 7 are among ten operators licensed in the city of Buenos Aires.
The granted licences are valid for ten years, with the possibility of renewal. Casino games must be evaluated on a yearly basis for compliance. That assessment will include “bet frequency, event frequency, event duration, payout interval, amongst others”.
Games will also be assessed for violence, indecency and any encouragement that the player is using skill.
Failed bids came from Nuevo Plaza Hotel Mendoza, Slots Machines SA, Daruma Sam, New Star-New Ads and Biyemas Skill.
Daruma Sam won a tender in Paraguay in January to operate sports betting on an exclusive basis, amid accusations that corruption was involved and the the tender was specifically designed so that Daruma Sam would be the only company that met the requirements.
Mendoza has yet to publish an annex to its resolution listing the reasons why certain companies were rejected, listing them only as “being inconvenient to the interests of the State”.
With a population of 2.1m, the province of Mendoza is slightly smaller than the city of Buenos Aires with an estimated 3m people.
