SiGMA Americas Virtual Summit Argentina welcomed market experts to discuss Argentine’s fragmented federated state regulation as well as evolving regulation across the developing Argentinian markets.

Moderator?Reuben?Portanier, Director of?Afilexion?Alliance,?was joined by Victor Arias, Vice President for?LatAm?for Pragmatic Play, Victor Araneda,?International Business Development Director of GAMING1, and Sebastian?Vivot?the Technology Manager at?Lotería. Argentina and the complexity of its fragmented federal states regulation

Providing?context to the discussion.?Argentina is the second largest stretch of land in Latin American, with a population of?forty-five?million people.?It also has the third largest GDP in the South American region, Buenos Aires holding the highest GDP per capita among the major cities in Latin America.?Impressively, the estimation on the?gaming tax revenue on from sports betting alone is estimated to be or will be around $6.8 million.?

Fragmented federated States regulation and Argentina??

What’s unique to Argentina is that?there?are?23?provinces in Argentina and?one?autonomous city, which is the city of Buenos Aires. When discussing the autonomous city, we mean autonomous?in terms?of regulation or exploitation of the gambling industry?both for land-based on online gaming.??

This has created a lot of problems for the country,?specifically,?the city of Buenos Aires, as?Vivot?notes:?

It is not the?licence?that’s?the?main?issue,?the?primary?challenge?occurs as a?result?of our constitutional?and regulatory?differences”.??

The reason for this?being the?contrasting regulation between the different provinces; unlike other neighbouring cities, Buenos Aires needs specific permits on top of?holding?licences?for international or national operators.??

Smaller provinces and Buenos Aires have been negatively affected?this?style of?regulation; as well as smaller provinces failing to attract international operators due to their size.

Compliance and Argentine’s?attractiveness??

From a compliance point of view, Arias argues?its complicated for them:??

“for content providers and it’s?gonna?be the same for operators, you know, to get into the market due to the fact that, you know, each province has its own terms…its own commercial?criteria”.???

What has also proven to be an obstacle is the depreciation of the?Argentinian?currency (Peso)?for?both operators and suppliers.??

Arias reaffirms:

the devaluation of the currency, it’s something that, you know, it’s affecting everybody. ?

COVID-19 and its influence on?regulation?

When discussing whether COVID-19 has ignited an?acceleration?in the take up of regulatory frameworks by the other 19 provinces,?Arenada comments:

For the case of our market, Argentinian market, I think that the reality of having the capital and the province going through a regulatory process of their own is probably a bigger incentive than Covid19 itself. ?

SiGMA?Agenda:?

SiGMA Group Americas Digital Summit is running from the 22nd to 24th September, bringing well-known faces from the Latin American gaming and tech sector to a series of in-depth debate panels, with content offered in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. ?

The 7th edition of?SiGMA Europe?will move its November event to February 16th to 18th 2021.?