Argentine Superliga and AFA officials have demanded that President Mauricio Macri (Cambiemos party) suspend the Buenos Aires province’s approved gambling reform, which will introduce Argentina’s first sanctioned online gambling legislative framework.
Football leadership states that Buenos Aires’s gambling mandate is unconstitutional as the Cambiemos government formed Argentina’s new “National Sports Agency (ADN)” this January, given the directive of governing “all Argentine games of chance”.
Issuing a statement to Argentine news source Tiempo, Superliga representatives declared that the BA executive had acted without consulting football clubs, whose matches would be wagered on, with online bookmakers further utilizing Superliga club identities to entice customers.
In its complaint, Superliga and AFA governances state that BA’s actions have rendered the new ADN as impotent in governing Argentine sports.
Spearheaded by BA Governor Maria Eugenia Vidal, last December the executive of Buenos Aires approved the province’s ‘2019 Budget Plan’, which will implement a revamped BA gambling framework – introducing new retail/arcade taxes, alongside an initial seven online gambling licenses.
The Budget Plan specifies that BA’s new gambling code will be monitored by ‘IPYLC – the Argentine Provinces Board for Lotteries and Casinos’ – detailing no mention of Cambiemos’ ADN plans.
Nicolás Russo, President of Lanús FC and a member of the AFA’s executive committee, detailed that the AFA was willing to present alternative plans to the BA executive involving football compensation.
“We do not rule out taking some measures of force,” he said. “It is not serious or fair to use football matches to bet and that clubs do not charge a peso. Nobody consulted us anything…we should be allowed to make a presentation to those who are driving reforms.”
Russo maintains that football governance does not stand against regulating betting, but that sports stakeholders should be rewarded in any future policy.
Source: GMB / SBC Americas
