Chile proposes 15-year prison terms for offshore iGaming after its first wave of blocks collapsed

Núñez’s amendment to the online gambling bill, Boletín 14.838-03, would reserve digital betting exclusively for entities already authorized by law, Polla Chilena de Beneficencia and Lotería de Concepción, instead of opening licenses to private operators. The toughest penalties, up to 15 years in prison and fines reaching 10,000 monthly tax units, roughly $740,000, kick in for aggravated cases: minors involved, shell companies, falsified records, ties to organized crime, or operators that keep running after a court has already ordered them shut down. Senator Gastón Saavedra filed a parallel amendment pushing a similar ban on private platforms.

The bill also proposes a dedicated judicial track for permanently blocking sites, mirrors, and apps, one where a court has to confirm a new domain belongs to banned activity before it gets added to the list, and internet providers then have 48 hours to comply.

That timeline echoes, deliberately, how the last blocking effort played out. On September 1, Subtel ordered Chile’s telecom providers, Entel, Movistar, Claro, GTD, WOM, and VTR, to block 42 betting sites, including Betano, Coolbet, and 1xBet, within 48 hours, acting on rulings from the Supreme Court and the Santiago Court of Appeals. Operators moved to new domains within a day or two. Subtel itself has described the resulting cat-and-mouse dynamic as “permanent and cyclical,” not solved. Macarena Carvallo, Polla Chilena’s former board president, called the blocking necessary but not enough without comprehensive regulation behind it.

Chile’s government hasn’t filed its own amendments to the bill yet. The Senate has pushed the deadline for amendments to Monday, October 26, and reporting on why points to disagreement between Segpres and other ministries over how to proceed, not a simple scheduling delay.

Where this lands matters for anyone running affiliate traffic into the country. Núñez’s version doesn’t just ban unlicensed operators, it closes the door on a licensed private market altogether, which would leave Chile as one of the few Latin American jurisdictions betting on a state-only model instead of regulated competition. The amendment also reaches past operators themselves to anyone who knowingly finances or promotes a banned platform, language broad enough to cover payment processors and advertising partners, not just the betting sites running the games.