Roberto Arroyo, a deputy for the Social Christian Party (PSC), sent a letter to the Minister of the Interior and Public Security, Carolina Tohá, to request detailed information regarding the actions carried out by the Undersecretariat of the Interior and the Undersecretariat of Crime Prevention to confront the proliferation of illegal casinos and gambling halls throughout the country. It is not the first one related to the operation of gambling in Chile that he has presented.
At the beginning of the month, he presented another in which he requested the National Association of Professional Football (ANFP) to report on the sponsorship contracts that it had signed with online sports betting houses. The document is addressed to the president of the ANFP, Pablo Milad, who is asked to know the current status of said contracts, taking into account that both the Supreme Court and the Executive Branch stated that they were illegal operations.
The legislator said: “We have many pending issues with the ANFP regarding the fact that they continue to use advertising for betting houses despite the fact that the Supreme Court has delivered its verdict and the Minister of Justice also established that their contracts were illegal.” In this regard, Arroyo asked “How lawful or legal can it be for sports clubs to use a logo for something that is illegal? Because in Chile it has already been determined that all betting systems were prohibited.”
The deputy, who is a member of the Sports and Recreation Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, extended the letter to the Ministry of Justice to find out if they are aware of the contracts between the betting houses and the ANFP and, if they continue to incur in illegality, to take action “on the matter.” It should be remembered that in September 2023 and in accordance with what was established by the Supreme Court of Chile in a ruling, five football clubs made official the withdrawal of online betting house advertising from their uniforms on the last date of the First Division championship.
These are Coquimbo Unido, Deportivo Ñublense, Everton de Viña del Mar, Audax Italiano and Unión La Calera, which had signed sponsorship contracts with the Betway betting house in January 2022. On the other hand, in October of that same year, the National Professional Football Association (ANFP) ended the link with Betsson, the main sponsor of the first two categories of national football, by the company's own decision, which chose to terminate it.
