Buenos Aires lawmakers resume debate on gambling and minors
Two years of projects stalled by a lack of agreement between the ruling party and the opposition culminate in a new meeting. On Wednesday, September 16, the Committee on Gambling, Lottery, and Problem Gambling Prevention of the Chamber of Deputies of the province of Buenos Aires will meet, with the aim of unblocking initiatives presented in recent months to regulate gambling and prevent minors from accessing online betting.
This will be the second meeting of the committee, which debuted in July. On the agenda are around twenty projects that will be analyzed comprehensively and transversally, 15 of them bills signed by different political blocs. According to the Diputados Bonaerenses portal, the summons sent to the members specifies that the meeting is dedicated to projects on the prevention of problematic, compulsive, or pathological gambling, and that the authors of each initiative have been invited to explain their scope and open a joint discussion, which anticipates a table with the presence of most of the blocs.
The committee is chaired by Micaela Olivetto, from La Cámpora. The vice-presidency is held by Fernando Rovello, from PRO and former head of the Provincial Lottery and Casinos, and the secretariat belongs to Diego Garciarena, from the Abadista faction of the UCR. Juan Pablo De Jesús, Marcela Basualdo, Roberto Ramón Vázquez, and Lucía Iañez, from Unión por la Patria, Jazmín Carrizo, from La Libertad Avanza, and Fabián Luayza, from Nuevos Aires, are listed as members.
The body was established in the first session of the year, held on Tuesday, February 24, under the presidency of Alejandro Dichiara, to which all 92 deputies of the Chamber were summoned. Its central task is to rule on the regulation, authorization, control, and oversight of gambling in all its forms, including online betting, digital platforms, and new technologies applied to the activity, as well as advertising, promotion, and sponsorship. The idea was to concentrate the accumulation of proposals on the subject in a single technical body and give them priority treatment.
The debate on underage betting in the province began in 2024, when several blocs presented their first projects. At that stage, the only things that prospered were some awareness campaigns and a joint opinion from the Addiction Prevention Committee that was never debated in the chamber, and that setback was what pushed political forces to agree on the creation of a specialized committee. The province of Buenos Aires enabled online gambling with Law 15.079, enacted in 2018, and its market is supervised by the Provincial Institute of Lottery and Casinos, the body that Rovello led before joining the Legislature.
This is a sensitive topic. If you are experiencing a problematic gambling situation or know someone who is, I can help you find appropriate support resources.
Tags: Buenos Aires Problem Gambling Commission, Buenos Aires Chamber of Deputies, Micaela Olivetto, Underage Online Betting