A Buenos Aires project copies the Brazilian solution and calls it the Lula law
Provincial senator Federico Fagioli presented a bill that prohibits online gambling in Buenos Aires territory and circulated it under the media name of "Ley Lula" (Lula Law), directly referencing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the measure that country adopted last month. The text proposes to repeal articles 146 to 173, specifically Chapter VIII of Online Gaming Regulation Law No. 15,079, which would revoke the licenses currently authorizing the activity in Buenos Aires territory.
The scope of the prohibition is defined by modality. It would exclude sports betting, both pre-match and live, online casino games, among which the project names poker, blackjack, roulette, and slots, and those bets on virtual events or games where the outcome is, totally or predominantly, dependent on chance, plus any other equivalent modality that involves risking money in anticipation of a prize or economic return. Lotteries, quinielas (pool betting), and raffles would still be permitted, along with the electronic sale of games without betting or cash prizes.
In justifying the initiative, as reported by Diputados Bonaerenses, the senator based his argument on the change in scale brought about by the digital channel. The legislator maintained that the expansion of platforms modified the traditional characteristics of gambling, explaining that betting from any connected device erased a good part of the temporal, spatial, and material barriers that for decades kept people away from physical venues. This leads to his doubt about the current tool, because immediate and permanent access forces a reconsideration of whether regulating licensed operators is sufficient, and he concluded with a statement on the available means, "the growth of these modalities poses new challenges for the control and prevention tools available to the province." For the legislator, the discussion should not be limited to the conditions under which authorized platforms operate, but should encompass whether certain modalities are compatible with public health as a criterion.
The exit mechanism is the most detailed part of the text and follows a short timeline. From its effective date, it would be prohibited for them to accept new deposits, top-ups, or transfers for gambling purposes. Within the first 10 calendar days, they would have to stop initiating new games and sessions, remove advertising, promotion, bonuses, and sponsorship, and block access to their gaming pages for any user located in the province. The deadline for returning money is 30 calendar days, with the obligation to return to each user all available balance in their account and to submit an individualized report to the Provincial Institute of Lottery and Casinos detailing balances, pending bets, prizes, and restitutions.
Advertising receives its own extensive chapter. The prohibition would apply throughout Buenos Aires territory to advertising, promotion, marketing, sponsorship, and any other commercial communication that, directly or indirectly, encourages online betting, with promotional codes, bonuses, affiliates, and influencers explicitly named. On the control side, the project tasks IPLyC Buenos Aires with identifying and blocking profiles, applications, sites, content, and digital mechanisms from which prohibited activities are offered or facilitated, with the possibility of filing criminal complaints, and asks the provincial administration for prevention campaigns that inform about risks, prohibitions, reporting channels, and free guidance, assistance, and treatment services.
The bill arrives at the Buenos Aires Senate at the same time that the Chamber of Deputies is preparing the opposite. The committee chaired by Micaela Olivetto advanced last week on a unified text to regulate platforms, including age validation, alerts, advertising limits, blocking of illegal offerings, and two funding sources, and for this Monday the 19th, it summoned the president of IPLyC, Gonzalo Atanasof, to answer technical and oversight questions. The two initiatives coexist in the same legislature and concern the same law, so the province will have to choose between tightening the current regime or eliminating it.
There is a piece of data from the model that the project takes as a reference and that should be considered before voting. Brazil has been under prohibition for three weeks, and the numbers can already be measured: more than 3,500 layoffs in the sector according to the national association, 16,627 illegal sites blocked by government order between September 25 and October 9, R$159 million in balances that platforms had to return, and a prosecutor's lawsuit against eight companies that did not provide their bettors' data. The 10 and 30-day schedule proposed by Fagioli is, in essence, the same as applied by Brazil, but with an institutional difference that changes the expected outcome: the Brazilian government was able to order the blocking of domains and cut payments because it controls the telecommunications authority and the national financial system, while an Argentine province has neither of these two levers and would have to rely on IPLyC for a task that, even with the Brazilian federal apparatus, has required more than a thousand blocks per day.
Tags: Buenos Aires Province, Federico Fagioli, betting ban, Law 15.079