MALTA MARKET FOCUS LATIN AMERICA
a 169.3 percent inflation 3 – and its currency has lost almost 98.3 percent of its value against the US dollar in the last decade 4 . Furthermore, this complexity is also present in its political organization. Argentina, by its constitutional design, has a federal structure. However, unlike other federal countries, the Federal Government dominates the political landscape, having major powers to regulate commercial, civil, and criminal matters delegated by the provinces through the National Constitution. For example, in 2016 the National Congress modified the National Criminal Code and included among criminal acts the offering of unauthorized gaming and gambling products. Banking and AML regulations are also imposed by the National Congress. However, this is not the case for gaming regulation. From the nation’s inception, gaming has been an industry that was regulated by the provinces. This led to the atomization of gaming regulation: in one country there are 24 gaming regulatory bodies with control over their jurisdictions, 23 provinces and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires which has constitutional recognition as an autonomous territory. It is worth noting that despite the existence of multiple jurisdictions, they share common ground through the Argentine State Lottery Association (ALEA) which brings together the provincial authorities and private sector entities. While all the provincial regulations share some similarities, each should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. For this article, we will be focusing on the regulation of three jurisdictions: the Province of Buenos Aires (“PBA”), the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (“CABA”), and the Province of Córdoba (“Córdoba”, and all together, the “Jurisdictions”). Online gaming regulation in the Jurisdictions Online gaming has been regulated by the CABA and the PBA since 2018. At present, there are 11 registered online gaming agencies (operators) in CABA, and licenses are issued for a period of five years, with the possibility of one renewal for another five years. CABA does not impose any restrictions on the number of licenses that can be granted. In PBA, by contrast, due to a statutory restriction – online gaming
was introduced by a provincial law that determines a fixed number of licenses – PBA can only grant seven online gaming licenses. Currently, it has granted all its licenses, and there are four active operators. Córdoba has a similar restriction to PBA. It can only award ten licenses, but the regulation is slightly more flexible and allows for ten additional licenses to be awarded if deemed appropriate. Córdoba’s first tender opened at the end of 2022 and ended at the beginning of 2023. The tender was closed with mixed results: out of the ten submissions, only eight licenses were granted but four were revoked. It is expected that the four remaining operators will go live through the remainder of 2023. Besides the restriction on the number of available licenses in some of the Jurisdictions, there is a common restriction through all three districts: a currency restriction that establishes the Argentine peso as the sole currency for all operations and some form of banking reserve for all the funds of the players. This banking reserve in the Jurisdictions is allocated in the provincial banks of each jurisdiction. Although adoption and regulations are advancing, as they arise from the current restrictions the local regulations have a long road ahead. Illegal operators With a solid understanding of the regulatory gaming landscape in place, we now delve into the intricate network of illegal gaming operators. First and foremost, how do players discover these gaming websites? As previously mentioned, most players are unaware that they are engaging with an illegal website. Their only knowledge is that they are participating on a platform claiming to operate under a license issued by an overseas authority. To further exacerbate this issue, illegal operators have found the ideal advertising partner in social media. In such cases, many influencers are as oblivious to the illegality of the business they promote as the players themselves, and there have even been instances involving high-profile celebrities associating with these illicit sites.
centran-la-informalidad/ 3 https://www.bcra.gob.ar/ 4 https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1707481956663832848/photo/1
IMGL MAGAZINE | JULY 2023 IMGL MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2023
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