After Brazil and Peru launched their regulated online gambling markets, attention should shift in 2025 from licensing and expansion to the prospect of stricter regulations in key Latin American jurisdictions.
The January 1 launch of Brazil’s national licensing regime was a fundamental step in confirming Latin America’s emergence as a largely regulated region for online gambling.
According to Vixio GamblingCompliance forecasts, total regulated revenue in Latin America is set to reach $12.3bn by 2028 versus around $2.5bn last year, with Brazil accounting for just over half the total.
But it is not just licensing and regulation that has spread to Latin America from Europe; the region is also at risk of repeating the pan-European trend of policymakers imposing much stricter rules on advertising and responsible gambling in the wake of liberalisation.
Brazil did not even wait for the launch of its licensed market under a December 2023 law to start considering a regulatory reset, and there is little reason to believe the now licensed market will enjoy much of a honeymoon period in 2025.
Since November, a special commission in Brazil’s Senate has been probing the industry with a view to recommending new rules for advertising and marketing, the use of AI by operators and responsible gambling measures, among other areas.
Recent allegations of bribery involving lobbyists connected to certain commission members have stalled, if not derailed, the commission's momentum. It remains to be seen if senators will be willing to vote on the forthcoming legislative recommendations amid the controversy.
However, regulatory change could also come from a working group of various Brazilian federal government ministries that is due in February to conclude a separate evaluation of problem gambling risks related to online betting, with possible “regulatory actions” one area of inquiry alongside public education campaigns and others.
Pending legal challenges in Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court are another front to watch, with justices having already shown a desire to impose additional regulatory restrictions to guarantee constitutional protections afforded to Brazilian citizens.
In Argentina, the federal Chamber of Deputies already has shown its hand by passing a sweeping bill in late November to essentially ban all advertising of online gambling, as well as bonus offers and credit card deposits.
That bill still must be passed by Argentina’s Senate in 2025 and President Javier Milei has reportedly said he would veto the measure if it was approved by Congress.
Still, similar restrictions have also been proposed in a large number of Argentina’s 23 provinces that are responsible for regulating online gambling within their jurisdictions, and shared policy concerns related to youth exposure to gambling mean a regulatory change of some fashion feels inevitable.
Tax increases on online gambling are another trend to watch in Latin America.
In Colombia, operators won a hard-fought lobbying battle last year to avoid VAT being applied to their revenue on top of the taxes they already pay to Colombian health services, but the President has pledged to revisit the issue in 2025.
New taxes are also either being implemented or formulated in both Brazil and Peru.
The risk of adverse regulatory change has not escaped the attention of leading industry executives, per a panel of CEOs at SBC Summit Latinoamerica in Miami in October.
Each jurisdiction has unique political and policy dynamics, but it is important for officials across the region to look at international markets to consider which regulatory models have worked and which do not, said J.D. Duarte, CEO of Betcris.
“Unfortunately, history repeats itself,” Duarte said.
Legislation In Focus In Chile, Maybe Mexico
The launch of Brazil’s licensing regime means the country has joined Colombia, Panama, Peru and a majority of Argentina’s provinces in establishing a fully regulated market for online gambling.
Chile still appears to be next in line, with senators expected in 2025 to continue their slow-moving evaluation of a bill that was already passed by the lower house of Congress in late 2023.
Depending on the overall policymaking climate for gambling, Brazil’s Senate may go back to the well this year and finally vote on a long-pending bill to authorise land-based casino-resorts and video-bingo operations, which likewise has already been approved by the lower house.
Mexico is more of a wild card.
Late last year, a key congressional ally of President Claudia Scheinbaum said the new administration was in the process of preparing legislation to finally update a federal gambling law that dates back to 1947.
Such a move would be welcomed by many participants in a Mexican market operating under a 2004 presidential decree that has since been altered on several occasions, most recently in a very prohibitive way.
The conventional wisdom is that gambling reforms are more likely to be addressed in the first year or two of a President’s six-year term, rather than in the run-up to or aftermath of mid-term elections scheduled for 2027.
The fact that the current law has endured for more than 75 years speaks to the difficulty of passing new gambling legislation in Mexico’s Congress; however, the most recent effort ten years ago quickly stalled in the Senate after being passed by the Chamber of Deputies.
Scheinbaum, for her part, has downplayed the recent comments that suggested a new gambling law could be introduced in Congress within a matter of weeks.
“It is true that [the gambling law] dates back a very long time, but we don’t have a proposal yet,” Scheinbaum said in December.