Gambling in Argentina: new bill proposes biometric ID in the Province of Buenos Aires
The bill intends to prevent minors from participating in gambling.
Argentina.- The UCR provincial deputy Diego Garciarena has submitted a bill in the Province of Buenos Aires that would require biometric identification for gambling products. The bill also aims to limit gambling advertising in a bid to reduce exposure among minors.
Garciarena claimed that the province, the most populous in Argentina, had seen an increase in underage gambling. On the topic of advertising, his bill proposes to follow the lead of countries such as Spain and to ban the use of well-known public figures in sport and entertainment from promoting gambling.
He said: “It’s not that we lack policies or norms on the issue, but policies are failing, generating a bureaucratic Russian roulette and violating the guarantees of protection for our children and adolescents.”
He added: “There are no effective requirements for the biometric control of access by age, licences continue to be granted, and the proliferation of illegal betting sites is not being tackled in a sustained way.”
Online gambling in Argentina is licensed at a provincial level, so frameworks vary among its 23 provinces and the federal district of Buenos Aires City. In the latter, where regulated online gambling launched in 2020, Gabriel Solano, a Workers’ Leftist Front member of the city legislature, has introduced a proposal that seeks to revoke the regulation of online gambling.
Solano’s party has little power in the Buenos Aires legislature, and it’s unlikely that his measure will advance, but it’s a sign of a hardening view being taken in light of concerns about the exposure of minors to gambling, particularly via ads on social media.
