Court of Appeal imposes measure for DNS blocking of unlicensed gambling sites in Chile
Major telecoms companies will be expected to block unlicensed gambling sites in a win for Chile’s state-authorised lottery duopoly.
Chile.- The Court of Appeals of Santiago has established the mechanism by which Chilean telecommunications companies must block access to unauthorised gambling websites. The move advances the implementation of a previous Supreme Court ruling while Chile’s online gambling regulation bill continues to face legislative delays.
The court determined that Domain Name System (DNS) blocking must be applied by the companies Claro, Entel, GTD Manquehue, Movistar, WOM, and VTR to domains identified and subsequently validated as illegal gaming platforms. The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed against the telecoms companies by Lotería de Concepción, which operates alongside Polla Chilena de Beneficencia as part of Chile’s duopoly over regulated public lotteries.
The lottery operator had argued that the companies were allowing access to unauthorised online gambling platforms, a situation that, it argued, created conditions of unfair competition. Polla Chilena de Beneficencia later joined the case, the resolution of which comes two months after the introduction of a mechanism to tax offshore gambling operators in Chile
Stages of the blocking process
The court has adopted the technical measures proposed by Chile’s Undersecretariat of Telecommunications (Subtel), which establishes a permanent procedure for identifying and blocking new domains. In the first stage, appellants or third parties involved must inform the casino regulator, the Superintendencia de Casinos de Juego (SCJ), of the domains, subdomains, redirects, or derivative sites they believe are linked to platforms affected by the ruling.
The SCJ must then validate the information within its purview and determine whether the domains actually correspond to betting or gambling platforms. Once this verification is complete, the information will be sent to Subtel. The telecommunications companies will receive the list of domains and subdomains they must add to their DNS blocking mechanisms. They will be expected to implement blocking within the timeframe established by Subtel and then provide proof of implementation to the Court.
The procedure may be updated successively to incorporate new domains, subdomains, or mirror sites used by previously blocked platforms. The resolution also includes mechanisms to correct any errors and prevent the disruption of legitimate services.
Initially, back in April 2025, the Court of Appeals had rejected the lottery operators’ action, but the Supreme Court reversed that decision. In March 2026, the Court of Appeals considered the ruling fulfilled. However, the Supreme Court, through a writ of certiorari resolved in April, overturned that decision and ordered the reopening of enforcement proceedings, considering the blocking of the websites a necessary tool to achieve the central objective of the ruling.
