Chilean online casinos for Real Money

As touched on, you’ve been able to bet in Chile for over 170 years. However, the gambling regulations in the country are comprised of a patchwork of laws, some of them considerably old. For instance, the horse racing regulation dates back to 1902. State-controlled sports betting and lottery games go back to 1986, while brick-and-mortar casino gambling laws were introduced in 2005. The most recent addition to the bunch was the Online Lottery Act, which gave La Lotería de Concepción and Polla Chilena the right to sell online lotto tickets, offer sports betting and provide instant win games to Chileans under one state-owned brand.

Where does this leave online casino gambling, though? Surprisingly, this is not yet legalised. This is not because the Chilean government doesn’t favour legalising online gambling; they do. There is work afoot to do just that. It is believed that Chile wants to open online bingo, poker, and casino gambling opportunities to any operator who wants a license – they won’t have to be Chilean-based companies or monopolies.

However, until then, Chile has banned domestic online casino games. Notably, while this law prevents Chileans from joining any Chile-based internet casino, it doesn’t prohibit them from joining foreign, international casinos, nor does it clamp down on offshore operators from catering to Chileans. There is no enforced ban, so Chileans have a surprisingly large number of international casinos to choose from.

To legally offer gambling games (both online and offline) in Chile, you must obtain a license from La Superintendencia de Casinos de Juego. The rules in the Regulation on Processing and Granting of Operating Permits dictate what businesses must do to obtain those licenses from the SCJ.

In recent times, lottery and sports betting licenses have been issued to private companies by La Lotería de Concepción and Polla Chilena. Both companies are state-run and handed out to monopolies. Fantasy sports betting and social gambling games are legal and unregulated in Chile. Greyhound racing has been banned, but most other forms of sports betting are deemed legal.

While Chile has legal, regulated online casino gambling in the pipeline, there is currently no licensing or regulatory body in place to handle online gambling licenses. Chileans must be aged 18 or older to gamble.

Lottery games are popular in Chile. One of the most popular is the instant win game, Kino (keno). It is run by the La Lotería de Concepción and Polla Chilena in both online and offline environments. Football is the de facto national sport, so Chileans love to throw down on sports bets, to boot.

Poker is legalised (when playing at licensed casinos), and Chile is one of the major stops on the Latin American Poker Tour. It naturally has a big following in the country. Casino games are popular, but perhaps not to quite the same extent as the games already listed. When it comes to gambling games, Chileans love to play table games like roulette and blackjack, but many also have a soft spot for slot machines.

There are not currently any Chilean licensed online casino sites. However, this doesn’t mean that Chileans can’t bet at online casinos. There are plenty of offshore casinos out there for you to join, most of which are licensed out of Curacao. These casinos accept the Chilean peso as a currency and provide gameplay in Spanish.

Technically, these aren’t so much Chilean casinos as international casinos that accept players from Chile. For this reason, you don’t have to be based in Chile to play at these sites. While not strictly legal (again, there is work afoot to make them so), Chileans are not punished for signing up and playing at offshore casinos.