Colombia Gambling Sites and Law November 24, 2016 With nearly 50 million residents and are rapidly growing economy, Colombia is a hotbed for gambling activities. Up until 2011, the authority that was tasked with overseeing gambling activities here was Empresa Territorial para la Salud, or ETESA. Colombia’s regulated online gambling market is on track to grow by 83% in 2019, according to the local Coljuegos regulatory body. Wednesday saw Coljuegos hold its annual ‘Accountability.
It seems the inevitable is about to happen in the betting industry of Colombia. There is every chance they’ll lose the man that helped guide and immensely contributed to the making the nation the first South American market to regulate and formally legalize online betting.
At the start of this week, the president of Coljuegos, Juan B. Pérez Hidalgo, Colombia’s gambling regulatory body, relinquished the role he’s held for about five years.
Foreign online poker sites are prohibited from accessing the gambling market in the country. Online Lottery in Colombia. There are around 15 state-licensed providers for all sorts of lotto games in the country, some of them also organizing the online lottery in Colombia. “The gambling market in Colombia represented a watershed for the industry in the region, thanks to Coljuegos, the country’s gaming authority, the regulatory process’ evolution, which began with an interconnection system for slot machines and peaked with the country’s big break in 2016, the implementation of Agreement 4, which regulates online gambling,” Didier explained.
César Augusto Valencia, a business graduate of Pennsylvania’s Drexel University and an administrator at the Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla will take his place.
The major problem people have with this announcement is that although he comes with the necessary qualifications, he has little to no experience in the betting industry.
Some media outlets in Colombia had reported that Perez’s tenure was coming to an end about four weeks ago. According to reports from these outlets, they disclosed that Alberto Carrasquilla Barrera from the Minister of Finance had asked Perez to step down from his role at the helm of affairs for some undisclosed ‘political’ reasons.
When Perez was steering the affairs of the industry, Colombia approved legislation for online gambling in 2016. That’s not all, the country also gave Aquila Global’s Wplay.co website its first online license the next year.
As you might have predicted, the floodgates opened and several other operators followed. Grupo Vinnare became the 18th licensee towards the end of 2019. Presently, only sixteen platforms are active.
This week, Perez had a chat with a local media outlet, La Republica, he disclosed that online gambling accounted for 10 percent of the gambling market of Colombia in 2019; however, this share commendably doubled in 2020. This can be largely attributed to the impact of the pandemic land-based gambling.
Also, online gambling has been on the increase since the market was reopened. According to Perez, he said that online gambling produced COP5.36 billion (US$1.47 million) in 2017, COP37.9 billion in 2018, COP78.5 billion in 2019 and COP54.9 million in this year ending September.
The betting market experienced a new birth in October thanks to Zamba.co as the website became the first Coljuegos-licensed website to unveil a live casino option. This was after the regulator gave the green light for such activity.
Perez was also in charge of efforts to block all domains of competitors that are internationally licensed on Coljuegos-licensed websites.
On the other hand, this proved to be an impractical fight in almost all markets that this move has been tried on. This did not deter Perez as he believed he’ll make headway.
He went on to sign a new deal with the Ministry of Information, Technology and Communications this September. The aim of the deal is to take necessary actions against more than 4,100 domains names on the blacklist.
Not considering setbacks, pioneering path Colombia took attracted more than just local Spanish-language operators as Betsson – as United States operator Rush Street Interactive and European firm – took about 70 percent stake in Colbet, an online licensee in Colombia last July.
This move was after they made a similar purchase in Brazil which has become a market that has been trying to follow the lead created by Colombia for several years now.
Source:https://calvinayre.com/2020/11/25/business/colombia-online-gambling-coljuegos-regulator-perez-quits/
Entain Plc (formerly GVC Holdings) expects to launch its Bwin sportsbook property for the regulated Colombian online gambling market next month.
Martin Lycka, Entain’s Senior Vice President of US Regulatory Affairs & Responsible Gambling, told SBC Noticias about the fast-moving developments for the FTSE100 betting group within Colombia.
Having recently secured a Colombian online gambling licence by federal regulator Coljuegos, Lycka confirmed that Entain would push for an early 2021 market launch of its flagship Bwin sportsbook.
At present, Colombia operates as South America’s solitary regulated online gambling marketplace having launched its online gambling regime in 2017, allowing for foreign operators’ subject to securing local partnerships.
A Colombian launch sees Entain maintain the objectives of its new corporate charter, in which the FTSE firm has promised investor to operate 100% across regulated markets by the end of 2023 trading.
“Colombia is Entain’s first regulated country in Latin America – our bwin brand is the first truly global gambling brand to have become licensed in the market,” Lycka commented to SBC Noticias.
“Following our 9 December rebrand, we plan on growing our Colombian business to become one of the biggest and at the same time the safest online gambling offering in the country.”
Moving forward, Lycka detailed that Entain was also monitoring all LatAm market developments closely. “In accordance with our new strategy, we look into other opportunities across the region, in particular in Brazil, which we expect to regulate throughout next year,” he added.