The casino tender in Chile ends with two vacant licenses
The tender for new casino operating permits in Chile concluded with results far below competition expectations, as two of the four slots put out to tender by the Superintendency of Gaming Casinos were declared void, and the other two received only one applicant. According to the regulator after the bid presentation hearing on August 11, only two projects were received: Casino de Juegos de Coquimbo for Coquimbo and Casino Volcán Pucón for Pucón, while no proposals were submitted for Iquique and Viña del Mar. This outcome means there was no competition among bidders in any of the slots, so the authority will have to evaluate the two received offers within a maximum period of 120 days and subject Iquique and Viña del Mar to new processes with special conditions that must be incorporated into the bidding terms.
In Pucón, the sole project was submitted by a company linked to Andrés Raggio Guerrero, former Treasury Manager of Enjoy, specifically incorporated to participate and, according to local media, related to other former executives of Enjoy's previous operation in the commune, which had relinquished its slot in 2025. In Coquimbo, the only proposal also came from a company incorporated for the tender. This scenario caught the attention of established operators, and Marina del Sol stated that the fact that both slots received only one bidder demonstrates that the process failed to attract new participants or generate effective competition, noting that the Pucón bidder is linked to former Enjoy operators and the Coquimbo bidder to the company's creditors.
The most striking situation occurred in Iquique, where no bids were submitted, after Dreams decided not to participate in any of the four tenders, considering the conditions set by the regulator unviable, which it described as excessively burdensome and unjustified. For that slot, the company estimated the cost of the venue at 55 million dollars and warned that, at the end of the permit, the works would become municipal property without the right to compensation, making them an unrecoverable sunk cost. Added to this were a minimum annual economic offer of 68,000 UF (Unidades de Fomento), the obligation to maintain the entire workforce, and complementary works such as an event hall for 1,500 people and 380 parking spaces, estimated at around 160,000 UF.
In Viña del Mar, there were also no bidders, a significant case due to the importance of the slot and the background of the previous process, awarded in 2016 and ending with the operator's relinquishment of its license. Dreams questioned the three-month start-up period, which it considered impossible for an incoming operator compared to the at least seven months it deemed necessary, in addition to the lack of clarity regarding the availability of the property, the impossibility of a technical visit, an economic offer of 394,000 UF annually, the improvement of Avenida Perú for up to 120,000 UF, and the obligation to maintain all personnel. Following the results, Marina del Sol called for an urgent review of the regulatory framework, arguing that the model in force since 2015 presents structural design flaws, and compared it to the 2005 process, in which more than 60 projects participated, including several foreign bidders, and approximately 1.5 billion dollars in investment materialized, a level that, in its opinion, has not been replicated under the current scheme. Dreams agreed with the diagnosis regarding the lack of incentives, with objections concentrated in Iquique and Viña del Mar, and the positioning of both companies occurred after the Tribunal for the Defense of Free Competition rejected appeals to halt the tenders on July 28.
Tags: Superintendency of Gaming Casinos, Chilean casino tender, Marina del Sol, Dreams