Chile Supreme Court ratifies blocking of betting platforms
Chile's highest court has made a decisive turn in the legal battle against unauthorized online gambling by revoking a previous resolution that deemed the blocking order imposed on the country's main telecommunications companies to have been fulfilled. With this decision, the Supreme Court not only reactivates the case but also highlights the ineffectiveness of current restrictions that allowed platforms to operate through the use of alternative addresses or mirror domains.
The ruling states that the Santiago Court of Appeals erred in archiving the process on March 18, 2026. For the higher court judges, there is a firm resolution with the effect of res judicata that must be fully respected. The ruling argues that the operators' failure to act against variations of web addresses constitutes an omission that facilitates an activity lacking legal or administrative basis in the national territory. In this regard, the court has also accepted a formal complaint against the lower court ministers for considering that their resolution irregularly favored the companies involved.
As a direct consequence of this judicial mandate, companies such as Claro, Entel, GTD, Movistar, WOM, and VTR now have a peremptory period of five days to implement technical measures to ensure the total blocking of betting platforms. The order is explicit in demanding that the restriction extends to all versions and variants of the URLs that sportsbooks use to evade legal action, forcing operators to adopt effective solutions that prevent users from accessing these sites.
The legal conflict, originally driven by Lotería de Concepción and Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, has focused on the operators' actual ability to control the constant mutations of digital links. Although telecommunications companies argued that they only had the technical capability to block main links and that attempting to act on variants could jeopardize the stability of other internet services, the Supreme Court has dismissed these justifications, prioritizing compliance with current law and the protection of the regulatory order.
Despite the forcefulness of the mandate, the technical reality continues to pose significant challenges for the sector. The most recent reports indicate that several betting platforms remain operational in Chile through subtle changes in their web addresses, which demonstrates the complexity of implementing an absolute IT block. With this new resolution, the case returns to the Santiago Court of Appeals, where the ministers must ensure that operators execute the blocking within the established deadlines and under the effectiveness standards required by the highest court.
Tags: Chile, online betting Chile, illegal gambling blocking, illegal casinos Chile