Chile’s Supreme Court has already answered the legal question most of BetMGM’s country pages are stuck waiting on legislators for. In October 2025, the court’s Third Chamber ruled 3-2, in a case brought by Lotería de Concepción, that online gambling without explicit legal authorization is illicit activity — not a gray area, not simply unregulated, illicit — and ordered the country’s biggest telecoms to block access to the sites running it. BetMGM was not named in that case. It is not named in any Chilean case, licensed roster, or industry writeup this page could find. The reason is simple: there is no record of BetMGM operating in Chile at all.

A Bill That Has Outlasted Three Election Cycles

Chile does regulate gambling — just not the online kind yet. Physical casinos run under Law 19.995, licensed by the Superintendencia de Casinos de Juego (SCJ). Online betting has no equivalent. Bill 14838-03, which would build one, was introduced back in 2022. It cleared the Chamber of Deputies on an 80-36-18 vote and moved to the Senate, where it has sat since. The government granted it top legislative priority on May 7, 2026, a procedural push meant to force faster committee action. It didn’t work especially well: a Senate committee spent mid-2026 wading through more than 300 pages of proposed amendments, and no passage date has been set as of this writing.

What Bill 14838-03 would actually require:

  • A new regulator, the Superintendencia de Casinos, Apuestas y Juegos de Azar
  • Operators incorporated in Chile as a sociedad anónima cerrada (closed corporation)
  • A 20% specific tax on online gambling revenue, matching the physical-casino rate
  • BetMGM: not an applicant under any corporate name tied to MGM Resorts or Entain

The Courts Didn’t Wait for the Senate

While the bill stalled, Chile’s courts started treating the gap as a reason to block, not permit. The first move came in 2023: Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, the state lottery operator, sued an internet provider and won an order to block 23 betting platforms. The October 2025 ruling went further, naming Claro, Entel, GTD, Movistar, WOM, and VTR directly and setting a blanket standard — unauthorized online gambling is illicit, full stop, until a law says otherwise. The SCJ has separately counted more than 900 unlicensed betting sites still reachable from inside the country, which says something about how hard that standard is to actually enforce.

Is BetMGM Legit, Even With No Chilean Footprint?

As a business, yes — it’s a 50/50 joint venture between MGM Resorts International and Entain, two publicly traded operators already licensed across the US, Ontario, Alberta, and Brazil. None of that track record substitutes for what Chile actually requires, which right now is a law that doesn’t exist yet and, once it does, a license application BetMGM has given no public indication of filing.

What a real Chilean launch would take: passage of Bill 14838-03 or its successor, a Chilean closed corporation incorporated specifically to hold the license, and an application to whatever regulator the final law creates. None of those steps has started under BetMGM’s name.

Who It Fits

Nobody inside Chile today — there is no license, no pending application, and a Supreme Court standard that treats the whole unauthorized category as illegal rather than merely unofficial. Readers tracking BetMGM’s Latin America map should look at Brazil, where the brand actually holds a federal license, not Chile. Betting should stay entertainment spending, never income, and Polla Chilena de Beneficencia and Lotería de Concepción remain the options with clear legal standing for Chilean residents today.