The authority currently doing the most to police online betting in Chile is not a gambling regulator at all. It is Subtel, the telecommunications watchdog, which has instructed internet service providers to block access to betting sites. That single detail explains why the country’s sports minister has walked into the betting sponsorship regulation debate: clubs are signing deals with operators that no licensing body oversees.
Sports Minister Francisco Riveros said he does not agree with sponsorship agreements between sports clubs and online betting houses while Chile has no iGaming framework in place. Speaking to the Chilean podcast Cómo te lo explico, he was blunt about it: “No me parece bien” — it doesn’t seem right to me — “and that’s why I think it has to be regulated.”
The minister’s position, stripped of spin
Riveros did not announce a policy. He described a problem and admitted he has not settled on the remedy. His words: “I’m working to get all the information so I can say which of the two situations — to regulate or to prohibit — fits reality better.”
Where he was certain was on minors. He called the risk of gambling-related harm among children “a terrible issue” and one that “directly has to be regulated.” He also raised a question most sponsorship debates skip: what the relationship between active athletes and betting companies should be, and whether players should be allowed to front operators’ advertising at all.
On process, he noted that the government of José Antonio Kast is working on regularising betting, and that for now the file sits with Subtel rather than a dedicated gaming authority. A bill to license online gambling has been moving through Chile’s Congress for years without becoming law, which is precisely the vacuum the minister is describing.
That is the whole of the news. Almost everything else written about it will be one of the misconceptions below.
Myth: a minister saying “I don’t agree” means a ban is imminent
Reality: a sports minister has no authority over gambling advertising in Chile, and Riveros explicitly said he is still gathering information to choose between regulating and prohibiting. There is no draft sponsorship rule, no timetable, no sanction.
What his comments do change is the political temperature. Ministerial criticism tends to show up later as clauses in legislation, and sponsorship is one of the cheapest concessions a legislature can make when it wants to look tough on gambling harm. Operators eyeing Chile should read this as a signal about what the eventual licensing regime will contain, not as an enforcement threat today.
Myth: “no regulation” means there are no rules in play
Reality: an unregulated market is not a free market. It is one where the pressure comes from instruments that were never designed for gambling. Site blocking ordered through the telecoms regulator is the obvious example — a blunt tool, inconsistently effective, and completely silent on whether a football club may wear a betting logo on its shirt.
This is the awkward position Chilean clubs sit in. They are taking commercial money from companies whose legal standing is contested and whose domains may be blocked. Without licensing, there is no register of approved sponsors, no advertising code, no watershed, no requirement to carry responsible gambling messaging alongside the logo. Nobody is checking, because nobody has been given the job.
Myth: shirt sponsorship is “just a logo”
Reality: a club sponsorship is a bundle, and the logo is the smallest part of it. A typical deal buys shirt or sleeve placement, pitch-side LED rotations, stadium naming or hospitality rights, social media activations, player appearances, odds integrations on the club’s own channels, and in many markets a co-branded sign-up offer.
That matters for the minors argument. Nobody has to advertise to a 12-year-old deliberately for a 12-year-old to spend 90 minutes looking at a brand name. Research across several regulated markets has consistently found that children following top-flight football are exposed to gambling branding during broadcasts, which is the empirical basis for the sponsorship restrictions already adopted in Europe. (Editors: attach the relevant national study or regulator report here.)
Riveros’s second point, on active athletes, is a separate question with its own logic. Players are role models and insiders at once. Several sports bodies already bar competitors from betting on their own sport; whether they can be paid to promote betting is a rule that has to be written explicitly, because it does not fall out of ordinary advertising law.
Myth: Chile is an outlier for even raising this
Reality: Chile is late to a debate that most mature markets have already had, and the answers have varied enormously. The range below shows there is no single template a Chilean bill would be copying.
| Market | Approach to betting sponsorship in sport |
|---|---|
| Italy | Blanket ban on gambling advertising and sponsorship under the 2018 Dignity Decree, in force since 2019 |
| Belgium | Near-total advertising ban from mid-2023, with sports sponsorship phased out over subsequent years |
| Netherlands | Untargeted advertising banned in 2023; sports sponsorship phased out, with team sponsorship ending in 2025 |
| Spain | Sharp restrictions from 2020 including front-of-shirt football sponsorship, though parts of the decree were later overturned in court |
| United Kingdom | No statutory ban; Premier League clubs agreed voluntarily to drop front-of-shirt betting sponsors from the end of the 2025/26 season, leaving sleeve and stadium deals in place |
| Brazil | Licensed regime, now with a nationwide ban on betting sponsor logos on football kits: logos had to come off Série A shirts by 5 October, affecting 14 of the 20 top-division clubs that previously had betting companies as shirt sponsors |
Note the pattern. Prohibition tends to arrive where the market was already large and visible. Chile would be deciding before its licensed market exists, which gives legislators an unusual amount of freedom and gives operators an unusual amount of risk.
Myth: licensing automatically reduces gambling advertising
Reality: it frequently increases it, at least initially. Licensing converts a grey market into a competitive one with marketing budgets, affiliate programmes and a land-grab for brand recognition. Brazil is the live example of what follows: licensing put betting brands on most Série A shirts, and the backlash produced a nationwide ban that forced those logos off kits by 5 October, hitting 14 of the 20 top-division clubs.
What licensing does change is who gets to advertise and under what conditions. That is the practical consequence worth planning for:
- Licence-gated sponsorship. Regulated markets typically make a local licence a precondition for sponsoring a local club. Deals signed now by unlicensed operators may need to be unwound or renegotiated.
- Content and placement rules. Expect mandatory responsible gambling messaging, limits on odds and bonus promotion in sport contexts, and restrictions around youth teams and youth-facing content.
- Athlete endorsement limits. If Riveros’s concern makes it into statute, active professionals could be barred from appearing in operator advertising.
- Club revenue exposure. Smaller clubs are the most dependent on betting money and the least able to replace it. Sponsorship restrictions almost always trigger a lobbying fight from the sports sector, not the gambling sector.
- Contract drafting. Any sponsorship agreement signed in a pre-regulation market needs a regulatory change clause. Several European clubs learned that the expensive way.
What to watch in Chile specifically
Three things will tell you how this lands. First, whether the eventual bill treats advertising and sponsorship as a dedicated chapter or leaves it to secondary regulation — the former is harder to soften later. Second, whether oversight moves from Subtel to a gaming authority, because a telecoms regulator enforcing blocking orders and a gaming regulator issuing advertising codes produce very different markets. Third, whether the athlete endorsement question survives into the text, since it is the most specific and most quotable of the minister’s objections.
Until then, Chilean clubs keep selling shirt space to operators that no one licenses, and the minister keeps saying he hasn’t decided whether to regulate them or shut them out. Both of those statements can be true at the same time, which is the entire problem.
A reminder for readers: betting carries a built-in house edge and loses money over time for players as a group. If gambling is affecting you or someone close to you, use the deposit, loss and session limits your operator offers, and seek support from a recognised local help service.
