SPORTS BETTING
Paraguay – Sports betting bids opened for new licence holder
By James - 1 November 2022
The National Gaming Commission (Conajzar) has opened the bids as part of the call for Public Tender No. 01/2022, which will grant a license for sports betting for the next five years.
A total of six companies had requested the Bidding Terms and Conditions, but only three submitted their offers. The formal opening of bids took place at the Conajzar headquarters.
The three companies that submitted bids are Daruma Sam S.A. (Apostala); the consortium B-Gaming Sucursal Paraguay and Gambling S.A. and a company owned by Luis Carlos Alder Benítez (under the name Playtech), whose legal representative is former Foreign Minister Rubén Melgarejo Lanzoni.
The bidding companies were also permitted to verbally present their case as to why they should be permitted to be the sole sportsbetting operator and criticise the bids put forward by their competitors.
When it came to economic offers, Daruma Sam S.A. offered a canon of 22%, while the consortium BGaming – Gambling S.A offered 27%, and Playtech offered 23%.
Directors of current license holder Daruma Sam S.A defended their track record saying: “We formally presented our proposal, we are sure that it meets all the requirements, based on the experience obtained in these five years and our knowledge of the market, we opted for a realistic, coherent offer, instead of reckless figures that later in practice are unfeasible.”
The financial part of the tender is only one aspect of the process as experience in the area will also be taken into account.
Local company Daruma Sam was granted the exclusive right to offer sports betting ahead of the last FIFA World Cup for five years. In September Conajzar opened the call for Public Tender No. 01/2022 opening up the process for the next five.
Sports betting is permitted under Paraguay’s gaming laws which date back to 1997. Sports betting used to be limited to a single location attached to a racetrack. The expansion began in 2015 after CONAJZAR announced that a sport betting tender would be launched in the near future as the board began to look at opening up the market. Since then sports betting in Paraguay has proven extremely controversial.
