Gambling in Argentina
The Argentinian gambling industry offers the widest range of legal forms of gambling: casinos, pari-mutuel betting shops, dog tracks, horse racing, lottery, and more. Argentinians have a passion for gambling, and they spend an estimated $4-5 billion each year on lottery games, slot machines, and race tracks. Argentina is the largest gambling market in South America, with 79 casinos and 12,318 slots, including special cruise ship casinos, along with a massive football betting industry. The government is planning the possibility of nationalization of the Argentinian gambling industry in the nearest future.
Online Gambling in Argentina
In Argentina with its largest percentage of Internet users in the region, online gambling is legal, but offshore companies are less visible. The first online gambling license was issued in 2006, and only 3 licenses have been granted nationwide since then. At present online gaming is illegal in the capital of the country. The fact that only locally based servers can offer online gambling does not stop Argentineans from regularly accessing and using offshore gambling sites, many of which accept local currency as payment. There were a few attempts of the government to ban access to offshore betting sites (in 2008), and online gambling altogether (in 2010), but such radical steps didn’t find the necessary support.