Chile creates permanent mechanism to block illegal betting
The Santiago Court of Appeals has established the mechanism by which Chile's main telecommunications companies must block access to unauthorized sports betting and gambling websites, in execution of a previous Supreme Court ruling. The court determined that the blocking will be carried out through the domain name system and must be applied by Claro, Entel, GTD Manquehue, Movistar, WOM, and VTR to domains that are identified and then validated as illegal platforms. The resolution stems from a process initiated by Lotería de Concepción against the companies, which it questioned for allowing access to unauthorized online betting platforms under conditions of unfair competition, and which Polla Chilena de Beneficencia subsequently joined.
The Court adopted the technical alternative proposed by the Undersecretariat of Telecommunications, which establishes a permanent procedure to identify and block new domains. In a first stage, the appellants or third parties participating in the case must inform the Superintendency of Gaming Casinos of the domains, subdomains, redirects, or derived sites that they consider linked to platforms covered by the judgment. Then, the superintendency must validate the background information within its powers and determine if they effectively correspond to betting or gambling platforms, to send that information to the Undersecretariat of Telecommunications.
The third phase involves technical communication to the telecommunications companies, which will receive the list of domains and subdomains that they must incorporate into their blocking mechanisms, after which they must execute the measure within the established period and prove its implementation to the Court. The procedure may be successively updated to incorporate new domains, subdomains, or mirror sites used by previously blocked platforms, and the resolution also contemplates mechanisms to correct possible errors and prevent legitimate services from being affected.
The dispute dates back to the protective appeal filed by Lotería de Concepción against the operating companies. In the first instance, the Court of Appeals had rejected the action in April 2025, but the Supreme Court reversed that decision and ordered the prevention of the transmission and promotion of gambling, with the blocking of the sites indicated by the appellant. in March 2026, the Court of Appeals considered the judgment fulfilled, although the Supreme Court, through a complaint appeal resolved in April, annulled that decision and ordered the reopening of the execution process, considering blocking as a necessary tool to fulfill the central objective of the ruling. With the new resolution, the court seeks a procedure that is not limited to the originally identified domains, but that can be kept updated with the appearance of new addresses and mirror sites.
Tags: Santiago Court of Appeals, blocking of betting sites in Chile, Lottery of Concepción, Superintendency of Casinos of Gaming