Subtel accumulates ten legal challenges over betting blocks
The betting platforms blocked in Chile have responded through every available channel at once. The Undersecretariat of Telecommunications (Subtel) has accumulated six administrative and three judicial challenges over domain blocks, plus a lawsuit filed by Latamwin, according to details presented by Undersecretary Romina Garrido before the lower house's Economy Committee, which had summoned authorities to assess compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling.
The scale of the operation reflects the magnitude of the conflict. According to the Superintendencia de Casinos de Juego, the blocking of 174 illegal sites has been ordered since August 19, with instructions sent to Subtel and to Wom, Entel, Claro, Movistar, VTR, and GTD, the country's six largest internet service providers.
The judicial landscape reveals three constitutional protection actions (recursos de protección) at different stages. CoolBet's petition was rejected and has a motion for reconsideration pending, EpicBet's was ruled inadmissible with an appeal underway, and Latamwin's has yet to be reviewed. The latter company also filed a declaratory judgment lawsuit with a specific objective: to rule that neither Subtel nor the Superintendency has jurisdiction to determine the legality of what these platforms offer. Garrido and Superintendent Eduardo Cáceres countered the argument with the same rationale: neither of them decides which sites are blocked.
On the administrative front, six filings seek to overturn the blocks: EstelarBet submitted two appeals, Betano two requests, and Betsala and Jugabet one each. The undersecretary also described the climate surrounding the proceedings, speaking of intense media lobbying, with platforms branding the agency's actions as illegal, and noting that documents landing on her desk have an openly threatening tone. Regarding the effectiveness of the blocks, she was blunt: it continues, but platforms swiftly shift their domains to new ones, leaving the court ruling unfulfilled.
Cáceres framed the issue around what the regulator has repeatedly pointed out: these platforms are unregulated, meaning the Superintendency lacks the authority to sanction, regulate, or supervise them, and the solution lies in passing the online gambling bill. That bill, however, has just been granted another extension. The Senate extended the deadline to submit amendments until Monday, October 26 at 12:00 PM, after it expired on Friday the 16th without the Executive submitting its own, and party committees were convened by the Senate's General Secretariat to approve the extension. Vice President of the Republic Claudio Alvarado defended the decision from La Moneda citing two procedural facts: the bill is in its second constitutional stage in the Senate, and discussions had been stalled for months before resuming.
The details of the substitute amendment introduced by Senate President Paulina Núñez have now emerged. It targets up to 15 years of actual prison time for anyone promoting illegal sportsbooks, fines reaching up to 10,000 UTM, criminal liability for involved legal entities, and 15 years of imprisonment in aggravated cases. The text also establishes a judicial procedure for permanently blocking websites, applications, and channels used for illicit gambling, incorporating dynamic mechanisms that extend restrictions to new platforms created solely to circumvent initial bans. The stated objective is threefold: to prevent the illegal market from expanding, protect families, and close off digital spaces that could be exploited by organized crime.
There is a jurisdictional vacuum that Latamwin's lawsuit accurately targets and that the session itself laid bare. The courts ordered the block, Subtel enforces it without assessing the legality of the content, the Superintendency maintains it cannot supervise what is not regulated, and thus none of the agencies along the chain claims the authority to decide what is illegal. That is the question the company wants a court to answer, and until a statutory framework exists, the answer will continue to be built on a case-by-case basis. The second issue is one of design and was described by the undersecretary herself: domain blocking against operators that constantly register new domains is a race with no finish line, which is why the dynamic mechanisms proposed in the Senate's amendment are the most critical part of that text, even more so than the scale of penalties. In between stand the 174 sites already blocked and a list of platforms challenging the shutdowns while continuing to appear on advertising media across Chile,something a consumer organization report documented last week with Primera División football clubs. It is worth noting who is challenging these actions, because of the six administrative filings, two carry the names of brands operating at significant volume across the rest of the region, fundamentally shifting the nature of the dispute. This is not a clash between the state and fringe operators, but between the state and companies with legal infrastructure, litigation capacity, and a regional strategy that involves waiting until the Chilean framework is established. The contradiction the regulator cannot resolve is that these very same companies could be tomorrow's licensees, meaning today's enforcement actions target tomorrow's potential operators, and every court ruling handed down in the interim will serve as precedent for a framework that Congress has yet to write.
Tags: Chile, Subtel, illegal website blocking, Paulina Núñez