South America is quickly gaining interest from gambling operators.

While online gambling continues to grow throughout the United States, Canada and much of Europe, operators are searching for new opportunities to launch their brands as those other markets start becoming saturated. For quite some time Asia was seen as the biggest opportunity for growth but it has become evidently clear that the entire continent is shunning online gambling and only focusing on growing land-based gaming, where legal.

Where to expand?

Mainland China and India have laws in place banning almost all forms of gambling and there is no indication that will change anytime soon, while Macau, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Japan are all focusing efforts to build out their resort casinos to bring in tourism. And even countries that have laws banning gambling such as Thailand and the UAE, are now focused on building resort casinos. But in every case, online gambling is frowned upon despite citizens in those locations still gambling with offshore online operators. The Philippines was the one location that did have a thriving online gambling market, but last year President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the shutdown of almost all POGOs and by 2025 online gambling in the Philippines was a thing of the past.

Operators have looked at Africa as a possibility to grow the market, although South Africa, which is the biggest lure, seems to have no intent to legalize online gambling and the remaining population is generally too poor to support a gambling industry. But the one continent that has started raising eyebrows is South America. For the most part, online gambling was not viewed as realistic in most of South America due to poor internet and mobile infrastructure but that has improved greatly and the spending power in the continent has improved as well. Moreover, the demographics of South America are changing. The growing younger population are quite interested in online gambling compared to land-based gaming, which they have expressed little interest in.

Eyes on Brazil

The biggest market in South America is Brazil, which has a population of over 210 million. Yes, the country has a lot of poverty as is witnessed with the many favellas but there is also quite a bit of wealth distributed and the new technology industry is producing many good paying jobs with a fair bit of disposable income. Until 2018 gambling in Brazil was illegal because of its predominant Catholic and Evangelical Christian population whose leaders bemoaned gambling because of its social ills. But in 2018, the country led by President Jair Bolsonaro legalized fixed-odds betting and the Ministry of Finance (Mincetur) was ordered to release a set of rules to govern it within two years. This decision was made as the country was looking for a way to generate tax revenue. Plus, the government realized that over 80% of sports fans admitted to gambling with grey market operators, particularly on soccer matches, so rather than fighting the inevitable it was decided to embrace sports betting in a legal and regulated manner.

Mincetur delayed fulfilling its obligations in 2020 due to Covid and in 2021 they released some haphazard regulations which were deemed almost irrelevant. In many ways it was similar to what happened with the UIGEA when it was pushed through hastily and the Attorney General who was given the job of producing regulations, released meaningless rules basically forcing the banks to monitor gambling transactions with no guidance. So, in 2022, Brazil’s Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI) took the lead to get the Ministry of Finance to release more concrete rules which it did including explicit directives relating to who could get a license, rules on underage and problem gambling, Anti money laundering (AML) rules, and the tax rate to be paid to the government on gross gambling winnings. In the meantime, all offshore grey area operators were told to apply for a license by July 2024 or they would be denied a license in the future. On January 1, 2025 the new regulated online market took effect with 66 operators receiving licenses, of which 14 were definitive licenses and 52 provisional ones. MGM was among the companies getting a definitive license while Bet365, Betano, Caesars, SportingBet, Betsson and many other familiar brands receiving provisional licenses. There were originally 103 companies that were said to have applied for a license, but many failed to meet the requirements set out by Mincetur. The license allows the operators to provide both fixed-odds betting on sports and casino games and land-based casinos are still illegal in the country, although online poker is disallowed.

Some of the main features of the law require that all operators be based in Brazil, they use a .br domain name, rigorous checks on customers be done to ensure they are at least 18 years of age and are not on any restricted list and that all advertising both on TV and social media not be directed to minors. As for taxation, the operators must pay a 12.5% tax on GGR (paid monthly) along with state and federal taxes. And players are required to pay a 15% tax on winnings which many operators fear will lead to gamblers still looking for grey market operators even if it means using a VPN to overcome the website blocking put in place by the country. The only form of payments for gambling are debit cards and an online instant payment system called Pix.

In a session called "Brazil 2025: A surge in licensing and lessons so far" at the recent SBC Summit Americas, panelists noted that the whole licensing issue has been a SNAFU but they seemed to have finally got the issue under control. It was noted that while the number of licenses is lower than hoped, there were 293 applications made and it is believed many of those not currently on the list of licensees will be accepted at some point in 2025 or 2026. The panelists did state that there was some concern on how they can move quickly enough to capitalize considering many of the licensees were already operating in Brazil illegally and have a head start. There was also quite a bit of discussion about forcing the public to pay a tax on winnings which is generally unheard of outside of the United States and a few smaller jurisdictions in Europe

More possibilities in South and Latin America

Aside from Brazil, other countries in Latin America that have garnered a lot of interest are Argentina and the Andes Region, which consists of Colombia, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador. While Venezuela is in the Andes region as well, it is not being considered due to the dictatorship there. Colombia is rife with land-based gambling establishments and it legalized and regulated online gambling in 2016 with the passage of the e-Gaming Act. It officially began licensing of operators in 2020. As of today, the country has listed only 15 legal operators namely, Bwin, William Hill, Bettson, Stake (Betfair), RushBet, BetPlay and the remaining mostly local companies. The country has stated that all other companies are operating illegally, although it seems Colombia isn’t sure how to block them. Colombia taxes operators based on how much they return to customers. If the amount is over 83% then they are taxed at 15% and if it is less then they are taxes at 17%. The country is also looking to add a 19% value added tax which analysts say will just drive citizens to continue wagering with non-regulated companies and is one of the things dissuading new licensees. The fact there are no consequences for operating without a license in Colombia as well as concerns around corruption, gangs and the notorious drug trade there has led many operators to just sit on the sidelines waiting for things to change before they seriously consider licensing in that country.

Not long after Colombia, Argentina also decided to regulate online gambling. The law in Argentina is very much like the United States where it is not federally regulated but instead is left up to the provinces to legalize or not. There are 23 provinces in the country of which about half have legalized online gambling, including Buenos Aires, which has almost 1/3 of the country’s residents. Because Buenos Aires has a large tourism industry they were quick to legalize everything gambling, including land-based casinos as well as online gambling, beginning in 2020. The regulations in Argentina are very strict with extensive rules relating to KYC, measures to ensure gamblers are 18 or over, Anti-money laundering (AML) requirements, submissions to software checks to ensure the fairness of games, biometrics for data verification and a full ban on advertising, sponsorships and celebrity endorsements for gambling. The tax is left up to the provinces (Buenos Aires charges 25% on GGR) although a 5% additional tax is given to the federal government. As of today, there are 11 gambling operators in Buenos Aires including Bet365, Bettson, Betway and eight smaller companies. It seems like with the U.S., many American operators are put off by the fact that there is no national regulatory framework and left up to the provinces which has been deemed as one of the biggest blackmarks in the American and Canadian iGaming markets.

Not long after Colombia and Argentina started licensing operators, Peru also legalized online gambling and unlike Colombia it has garnered a ton of interest. Land-based gambling in Peru has been legal for quite some time and some called Lima the "Atlantic City of the South," but online gambling was never regulated. That changed in 2022 when Peru’s Congress unanimously passed a law to legalize online sports betting and casinos and their President signed it into law on in August of that year. It went into effect in 2024. The Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism is the regulator of the online industry. Operators seem to be thrilled that the tax rate on GGR was set at only 12%, collected monthly as well as a 2% maintenance tax which is not taken into consideration for the GGR tax. Peruvian residents are required to also pay a 1% consumption tax (reduced to 0.3% until July 1) while foreign residents seem to be exempt from the tax. The law also puts in strong penalties for anyone operating without a license with fines up to $250,000 USD and a prison sentence of up to 4 years if the owners ever step foot in Peru or a country they have an extradition treaty with. The country also has put in blocking mechanisms for illegal operators, and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism has indicated they have blocked over 40% of illegal websites and expect that figure to continue to rise. Because there are such stringent rules, operators have started flocking to Peru making it one of the leading markets for new online gambling operations. The country received 145 applications for a license within 30 days of announcing the new online market and as of May 2025 the country says they have licensed 60 operators and 280 service providers including all the big names like Bet365, Flutter, Bettson and even Pinnacle. That number is expected to rise substantially throughout the year.

As for other South American countries, Bolivia and Ecuador passed laws in the mid 2000s banning all forms of gambling but the realization that their citizens are betting anyways and seeing the success of the gambling regulations in places like Brazil and Peru, both countries are now looking to legalize online betting and Ecuador made its first real move to doing just that when in October of 2024, their president lifted an advertising ban on gambling. There was much discussion about Ecuador at the SBC conference and while few thought this was going to be of great interest to most of the larger iGaming companies considering the small population of the country and the fairly low income level, the speculation is that a bill will be passed sometime either this year or in 2026 to make online gambling legal. It is notable that land-based gambling is still off the table in both Bolivia and Ecuador. Chile also passed a law to legalize online gambling in 2023 but it has since stalled in the Chile Senate and it is not expected to get attention again until at least 2026. In the meantime, land-based gambling revenue in Chile has been sinking quickly leading to calls for the online gambling bill to receive more urgent attention.

So, while North America and Europe are still seen as the biggest opportunities to generate gambling revenue, South America is quickly gaining interest as well. It’s clear that governments there want tax revenue and are pushing through legislation to make that happen as soon as possible. Unfortunately for operators, South America is not as rich North America or Europe so they need to do their due diligence before deciding whether to jump in. But if Peru is any indication, there is clearly a lot of upside making the investment worthwhile.

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