174 unlicensed sites have been ordered disabled since August 19, with instructions sent to the six main internet providers
Chile’s effort to enforce the Supreme Court’s order against online betting sites is now running through a thicket of legal challenges, with Subtel reporting six administrative objections, three protection appeals and a civil lawsuit against the blocking process, even as the bill that would replace the current patchwork stalls again in the Senate.
Subsecretaria de Telecomunicaciones Romina Garrido gave the figures to the Chamber of Deputies’ Economy Committee. According to the Superintendencia de Casinos de Juego (SCJ), 174 unlicensed sites have been ordered disabled since August 19, with instructions sent to the six main internet providers: Wom, Entel, Claro, Movistar, VTR and GTD. Garrido, who took office earlier this year, has previously described the process as carrying out a court-approved protocol rather than a discretionary policy, with blocking done at the DNS level and new domain lists arriving continuously, an initial 42 sites in early September, with more expected.
The judicial challenges run on three tracks. CoolBet’s protection appeal was rejected at first instance and awaits a ruling on a request for reconsideration. EpicBet’s was declared inadmissible and is on appeal. Latamwin has a protection appeal pending review and has added a “mera certeza” lawsuit asking the courts to declare that neither Subtel nor the SCJ has the legal power to judge whether its operations are lawful.
Administratively, six requests ask the authorities to lift the blocking orders, filed by EstelarBet (two), Betano (two), Betsala and Jugabet. That spans both of Chile’s operator associations: CoolBet and Latamwin sit in APAL, while Betano, Betsala and EstelarBet belong to iGaming Responsable, whose director Sandra Kemp said last month that her members were weighing their legal options.
Garrido and acting superintendent Eduardo Cáceres gave the same defence: neither agency decides which sites are illegal, they execute existing court orders. Garrido also described an aggressive communications campaign portraying the state’s actions as unlawful, and said some filings had an intimidating tone. She conceded the practical limit: operators migrate quickly to mirror domains, which blunts the blocks.
Cáceres repeated the regulator’s long-standing position that, without a specific legal framework, the SCJ has no power to supervise, sanction or regulate these companies; the only lasting fix is the online gambling bill. That bill has slipped again. The Senate pushed the deadline for amendments to Monday, October 26 at noon, after the original date passed without the executive filing its observations. Interior Minister Claudio Alvarado defended the delay as a function of the second stage’s complexity and the need to restructure a debate that sat idle for months.
The legal fight shows how much of this market’s future is being decided by default, through blocking orders and counter-suits, rather than by rules. Operators that have invested in local teams and publicly committed to regulation are using courts because no licensing route exists; the state is blocking because the courts told it to. Both sides, in effect, are waiting on the same legislative text.
image By Felipe Restrepo Acosta – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71454018