The management led by Maximiliano Pullaro would leave the exploitation of the business in private hands, to the detriment of the Santa Fe Lottery.
Argentina.- The government of the province of Santa Fe would have resolved how to proceed with the regulation of online gambling in the province moving towards the tender to promote the private exploitation of future licenses.
The law regulating online gambling, enacted at the end of 2023, gave the government a deadline of 180 days to decide whether sports betting would be managed by the Santa Fe Lottery or if the licenses would be tendered, without specifying how many would be available. This deadline was met more than a month ago and only now have government sources confirmed to the local media Letra P what the next steps will be.
As previously reported by Focus Gaming News, the option to move towards the tender was always the most desired by the provincial administration and now, as explained off the record by officials from Santa Fe, progress will be made in that direction.
Firstly, because the interested companies already have the available structure and can start operating more quickly. Secondly, the other option - that the license falls on the Santa Fe Lottery - involved embarking on the purchase of a high-cost system with cumbersome administration. In addition, there were legal issues to resolve for the state to manage the money from the bettors. It is no coincidence that all the provinces that regulated sports gambling did so via the concession of licenses.
The regulation, driven by Pullaro to resolve a situation created during the governmental transition, when his predecessor Omar Perotti allowed online gambling without including sports betting, now forces a direction to be defined. The option of concession, although complex in political terms, seems to be preferred by the provincial government due to the infrastructure already available from many interested operators.
Thus, as reported by Letra P, the technical teams of the Santa Fe Lottery - led by Daniel Di Lena, one of the figures closest to the governor - have been working for weeks on the design of the tender specifications, although it is not expected to be announced soon. They have to define, for example, how many licenses will be granted, for how long and whether they can be extended. It is also not defined how much the monthly fee will be that licensees must pay, who will also be prohibited from transferring the permits.
The decree signed by the governor in May of this year targets gambling, sports betting, horse racing, virtual games as the activities authorized for virtual betting in the province, to which those approved by the implementing entity will be added. This regulation does not take into account the bets that take place in person at the Santa Fe Lottery, unless the entity decides to digitize them.
According to the decree, the fee to be paid for the licenses recognized to the current casino concessionaires to instrument, implement, operate, and exploit online gambling activities must be paid monthly in arrears.
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The net results obtained from the exploitation of the activity, meanwhile, will be allocated 50 percent to the Agency for the Prevention of Drug Consumption and Comprehensive Treatment of Addictions (Aprecod). The distribution will be as follows: 10 percent to the Provincial Program for Sports Event Security, 10 percent to the Ministry of Justice and Security to be allocated to the acquisition of technological tools and devices; 10 percent to the Ministry of Education, the same percentage to the Ministry of Equality and Human Development, 10 percent to the Ministry of Health to be allocated to the Subsecretariat of Mental Health, and the remaining 10 percent to the Secretariat of Sports of the Ministry of Equality and Human Development of the Province of Santa Fe, which must be allocated to the Provincial Sports Fund (Fo.Pro.De.).
