Ferraresi proposes blocking betting on young people's cell phones
Online gambling returned to the center of the political discussion in Buenos Aires due to a proposal targeting mobile phones. Jorge Ferraresi, former mayor of Avellaneda and pre-candidate for governor, suggested that the Province should take measures to prevent children from accessing betting platforms from their phones and to remove such applications from devices.
The idea emerged during an activity with young people in Chivilcoy. Several students shared stories of people they knew and warned that some betting takes place within schools, a detail that shifted the focus towards adolescent access. Ferraresi stated that he seeks to prevent debt and associated mental health problems, linking it to his idea of implementing a mental health program in schools, and noted that the phenomenon also affects older adults. A segment of that discussion later circulated on social media.
The proposal does not arrive alone in the provincial debate. Axel Kicillof recently questioned, in Avellaneda, at the federal launch event of the Movimiento Derecho al Futuro, what platforms are doing to young people. "I would not leave our kids without a future, surrendered to betting applications," said the governor, thus incorporating online gambling into a national discourse, with next year's presidential elections on the horizon and his own candidacy in the air.
The third front is legislative and is the most concrete of the three. The provincial Chamber of Deputies is integrating several projects on online betting and problem gambling prevention to achieve a broader regulation. Last week, Facundo Tignanelli, head of the Unión por la Patria bloc, together with Micaela Olivetto, submitted expediente D-3634/26-27, titled "Comprehensive Regime for the Prevention and Regulation of Online Betting."
The text is structural in scope. Among its salient points are a Specialized Prosecutor's Office for Illegal Betting created from scratch, along with new regulations on advertising and prizes, the requirement for licensees to have entirely national capital, severe cuts to commercial advertising affecting street billboards and the use of artificial intelligence, the removal of the word "game" from all brand communications, the outright elimination of bonuses and incentives to attract players, session and access time limits, and live facial recognition as a condition for playing.
The weak point of Ferraresi's proposal is the instrument. A province does not control the distribution of applications on phones, which depends on Apple and Google stores and, at the national level, on communications bodies, so a provincial measure could only target platforms and not devices. What the movement does make clear is that three actors from the same political sphere,the governor, a pre-candidate to succeed him, and the majority bloc in the Legislature,are pushing in the same direction on a sector that in the province still operates under the licensing scheme granted in 2021. The difference between the three is not minor for operators with a Buenos Aires license, because the legislative project redefines the conditions of an already existing license, while campaign statements target demand rather than the licensee. Of the two fronts, the one with the capacity to change the economic equation of the provincial market in the short term is the legislative bill, not the discourse.
Tags: Jorge Ferraresi, Online betting in Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, Comprehensive Online Betting Regime