Unauthorized betting traffic in Chile grows 28%
A year of judicial and administrative blockades failed to shrink the audience of unlicensed sportsbooks in Chile. On the contrary, traffic to these platforms rose by 28 percent, from 19.5 million visits recorded in August 2025 to 24.9 million in August 2026, according to a report by the specialized platform Apuesta Legal, which monitors 17 operators.
The market distribution explains the scale of the problem. In August 2026, these 17 unauthorized operators captured 81 percent of the measured traffic, while the remaining 19 percent was split between the two entities that do have state permission: Lotería de Concepción and Polla Chilena de Beneficencia.
The offering also continued to grow. The Blask platform counted 145 brands operating for the Chilean public in the first quarter of 2026, seven more than a year prior, while Google search demand climbed by nearly 42 percent.
Football fueled this growth. Apuestas Royal secured sponsorship of 11 out of 16 First Division League clubs in early 2026, with an outlay of approximately US$3m, and the effect on its audience was immediate, with a surge of around 120 percent in two months, jumping from 1.09 million visits in June to 2.39 million in August.
Smaller brands replicated the curve on a lesser scale. Awintura multiplied its traffic almost fifteenfold, from 3,530 visits in June to 52,708 in August, and JetBet recorded 10,366 visits in the final month of the audit.
The administrative response focused on September and fell short. On September 1, the Undersecretariat of Telecommunications instructed Entel, Movistar, Claro, GTD, WOM, and VTR to apply DNS blocking to 42 addresses identified by the Superintendencia de Casinos de Juego. Hours later, several brands were already notifying their users of alternative addresses, mirror sites where balances and accounts continued to function without interruption. Subtel issued another resolution on September 21, this time concerning 37 more domains derived from the initial ones.
The data that closes the loop is that these 79 domains blocked in one month correspond to significantly fewer than 79 operators, because a single brand maintains several backup addresses and rotates them within hours. DNS blocking acts on the address while the business lives on the brand, meaning the count of downed domains measures the regulator's activity, not market contraction. Chile has also been discussing a bill to license online gambling for years, so the 28 percent increase occurred during a period when demand grew without any available legal offering to absorb it.
Tags: Illegal gambling in Chile, Subtel, Apuestas Royal, Domain blocking