Operator News
Chile – New tender begins for casinos in Chile
By Phil - 11 March 2020
A number of casino licences are up for renewal in Chile meaning that operators can apply for a licence renewal or other operators may put in a bid.
The Chilean Gaming Board (SJC) has now opened up the consultation stage of the draft of the Technical Bases of the Process for Granting Operating Permits 2020 for comments from industry and citizens. Once the public consultation stage is complete, the responses will be collected, a summary of the main clarifications along with the definitive terms and conditions will be published and the process will be officially initiated. Up to 12 gaming casinos can be authorised, corresponding to the quotas that will be made available between July 28, 2023 and May 13, 2024.
Comments on the proposal of technical evaluation of the bids will be received until April 9 through a form via www.scj.gob.cl/betchile, a platform created especially for the process. The platform will provide relevant information to those interested in applying for an operating permit. The website will also provide updates as the tender is underway.
According to current regulations, a gaming casino operation permit may be applied for in all regions of the country, with the exception of the Metropolitan Region and in addition, the Valparaíso Region is excluded from this process, as it already has the maximum of three casinos with a valid operating permit.
Current gaming casino operating companies may choose to participate in the process by applying for a renewal of their permits. According to the SJC current casino operators “will not have priority in the evaluation of the bids,” but will have a “preferential right to obtain the permit when having matched the economic bid of another applicant, should they receive a higher weighted score in the technical evaluation stage. However, as businesses already operating casinos and having SCJ authorisation, there are some differences in the background review and evaluation mechanism requirements, among others, that will evaluate their 15 years of operation.”
To ensure that this process is fair and transparent both for possible operators who wish to renew their licences and for potential new entrants into the market, the rules of the process will be public and known to all interested parties. Likewise, the files of the technical evaluation will be made public, once the process has been completed, except for certain restrictions. In addition, there will be a formal process of consultation and clarification during the application stage for both the technical bid evaluation and during the economic hearings.
Hopefully the new licensing process will be less controversial than the latest licence process. When the new licensing process was first initiated for the seven municipal licences, it was predicted that the new casinos would bring in considerable investment from abroad and herald in a major expansion of the industry. However the transformation was not nearly as great as it had been hoped.
Operators from the start were fiercely critical of the licensing process arguing that the demands put on them had been too great especially when it came to the annual fees that they had to pay which went on top of the 20 per cent tax on gross gaming income.
In addition the industry has been affected by economic uncertainty and civil unrest. In January the board reported that Gross gaming revenue for November 2019 stood at $35,357m Chilean pesos (U$S45,778.470), a negative monthly variation of minus 6.5 per cent when compared to the same month last year, while accumulated real growth stood -4.5 per cent over the last 12 months. Revenues decreased again in December by -4.1 per cent per cent when compared to the same month in 2018.
