Chilean Regulator restarts casino permit process
The new submission date for bids will be by October 18, 2021
In a note published on May 24, 2021, Chile’s casino regulators, Superintendencia de Casinos de Juego (SCJ), stated the restarting of “the process of granting or renewing operating permits for gambling casinos, initiated on July 27, and suspended for 270 days, and setting the new date for filing documentation of technical and economic offers for October 18, 2021, at 10:00 a.m., at the Hotel Gran Palace in Santiago, as indicated in Resolución Exenta N° 746 of 24 November 2020″.
Amongst the casinos to enter the new licensing process, with permits to end in 2023, are: Sun Monticello, Marina del Sol, Enjoy Antofagasta, plus Dreams casinos in the cities of Temuco, Valdivia and Punta Arenas.
The new licensing process has been challenged by industry operators who are calling for it to be conducted according to rules established when the concessions were granted, in 2005, which indicates that authorized operators have a preferential right in the renewal of permits for their casinos.
Also, the Chile government was criticized for authorizing Decree 77, which grants an extension in the development and construction work to certain operators, specifically as a measure to benefit the Enjoy group. However, reports indicate that on April 28, executives of local Banco Internacional – Enjoy’s creditors – met with the head of the SCJ Legal Division, Manuel Zárate, to dispel doubts about the the situation of the municipal casinos in Coquimbo, Viña del Mar and Pucón, granted SCJ in a 2020 public tender process to Enjoy, inquiring whether the economic offer for these casinos could be changed and paid monthly, to which the SCJ responded in the negative.
