Online casino searches outnumber sports betting ten to one
The key takeaway from the Eunomia Consultora report on online gambling searches in the province of Buenos Aires is not the growth, but the composition. For every sports betting search recorded by Google in Buenos Aires territory, there are ten for online casino—a ratio that dismantles the notion that soccer is the driving force behind digital gambling in the province.
Before looking at any numbers, a caveat highlighted by the consultancy itself must be kept in mind. Google Trends weighs how much a term represents within all searches conducted in a given location and timeframe, meaning none of these indicators reflect the number of users, the number of bettors, or the money wagered. What is measured is attention, not activity.
With that caveat, the data series shows considerable growth. Between 2022 and 2026, interest in sportsbooks grew twelvefold, and the January-to-September aggregate for this year stood 66 percent above 2023, despite an intermediate dip in 2025. The monthly peak of the entire series was June 2026, the month of the soccer World Cup. The report is titled Casino en el bolsillo: qué, cuándo y dónde se busca el juego online en la provincia de Buenos Aires.
Within casino, the products people search for have also shifted. In 2019, slots received ten queries for every one for online casino, but the ratio inverted in May 2022, and today online casino queries outnumber slots five to one. It is a shift in vocabulary that reflects a change in interface: players stopped searching for the machine and began searching for the venue.
Promotions followed their own trajectory, which is worth examining in the regional context. Searches for casino bonuses—including terms such as welcome bonus, free spins, and no deposit casino—are now six times higher than in 2023. While they accounted for 3 percent of online casino searches in 2023, they now make up 17 percent, with an intermediate peak of 22 percent in 2025. In other words, nearly one in five casino queries in the province is looking for a promotion, just as the Chilean executive branch proposes banning bonuses entirely and an Argentine national bill stalling in the Senate aims to ban welcome bonuses.
The calendar also leaves its mark, though the consultancy remains cautious with its claims. Between the 5th and the 10th of each month, once most formal-sector salaries have been credited, searches ran 3.8 percent above average; from the 25th to the last day of the month, they fell 4.1 percent below. This pattern repeats across all four measured years, but the consultancy clarifies that in 2024 and 2026 the margin of error for this increase touches zero, meaning that aligning with payday does not prove causation.
Tournaments, however, triggered clear spikes compared to the six weeks preceding each event: 33 percent during the 2024 Copa América, 20 percent during the following year's Mundial de Clubes, and 26 percent during this year's World Cup. The consultancy clarifies that the Eurocopa was also played in 2024, meaning the peak cannot be attributed to a single tournament, and provides the counterfactual that reinforces the series' credibility: in 2023, when that stretch of the calendar featured no major national team tournaments, no comparable increase was recorded.
Geography yields the most actionable insight for public policy. Based on an index built for 130 localities across the Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, the five licensed brands generate 26 percent more interest in the second ring of the Buenos Aires conurbation than in the inner ring, with 11 of the 13 municipalities in that outer ring ranking above the highest-placed municipality in the first ring. This represents roughly 6.6 million inhabitants. The intensity of interest, therefore, does not grow toward the urban core but toward the periphery, placing the issue in districts with the least healthcare infrastructure to treat gambling addiction.
The breakdown by brand confirms the power of soccer sponsorships. Seven out of ten searches for the five licensed brands analyzed by Eunomia—Betano, Betsson, Bet365, bplay, and BetWarrior—are concentrated on the two sponsoring River Plate and Boca Juniors. Averaging the nine months of 2026, Betano accounts for 52 percent, Betsson for 21 percent, and the remaining three for 26 percent combined, meaning that Betano alone captures six times the average of each of the other three. The trajectory is clear: Betano had been growing since its launch in 2024, climbed from 18 to 24 percent in May 2025—the month it debuted on River Plate's jersey—and from there surged to 52 percent in September 2026, nearly tripling its market share. The consultancy notes that between 2024 and 2025 the brand was also the title sponsor of the Liga Profesional, so the jersey sponsorship alone does not account for the surge. Today, a third of the league—ten out of 30 Primera División clubs—features a sportsbook or online casino on the front of its shirt.
The final chapter of the report is the most delicate and requires careful reading, as the same data point reverses direction depending on the baseline comparison. On September 8, 2026, a 2 percent levy took effect on prize payouts from instant-result online games—including virtual slots—established by the IPLyC under Resolución 1.149/2026, leaving sports betting untouched. During the first five weeks of enforcement, online casino searches dropped 52 percent compared to the immediately preceding five weeks. However, that prior period contained a peak that began on August 10, before the measure was implemented, and when measuring the effective period against the five weeks preceding that peak, the provincial index shows a 2 percent increase. In Santa Fe, a province where this levy does not apply, the indicator also declined. For Eunomia, preliminary findings are insufficient to confirm or rule out the measure's impact, partly because operators were granted a 30-day grace period before withholding began, and the firm notes it will continue monitoring.
These figures expose a design irony. The 2 percent levy targets instant-result games while exempting sports betting, effectively taxing the exact segment generating ten times more search interest while sparing the one generating ten times less. If the goal of the measure is fiscal, the choice is efficient; if it is deterrent, the design is headed in the right direction. What the report cannot yet answer is whether it actually worked.
Eunomia Consultora is an Argentine data analytics and social listening firm that produces reports on search behavior and public opinion. Google Trends is Google's public tool that displays relative search interest across terms, regions, and time periods, and is used as an indicator of attention in market research, subject to the limitation that it does not measure absolute volume or actual behavior. The Instituto Provincial de Lotería y Casinos regulates legal gambling in the province of Buenos Aires, where the Legislature is simultaneously debating several bills to regulate, tax, or ban online gambling.
Tags: Argentina, Buenos Aires, Eunomia, online casino