Senators from Entre Ríos province, Argentina, met this week to review a bill that would prohibit access to online gambling platforms through public internet networks administered by state bodies.
The session was held jointly with the Public Health and Drug Addiction Committee and the General Legislation Committee.
The initiative, introduced by Senator Otaegui, lays out a six-article framework in which the Instituto de Ayuda Financiera a la Acción Social (Iafas) would serve as the enforcement authority. Its responsibilities would include compiling a regularly updated directory of both licensed and unlicensed gambling sites operating in the province, filing complaints with judicial authorities to take down illegal platforms and distributing the list of sites, IP addresses and DNS entries to internet service providers for mandatory blocking.
Marcelo Monfort, Political Director of Iafas, said: "It's a difficult situation to control online gambling, the informality and clandestine accounts that cause harm primarily to minors, and also to the institute's revenue."
Germán Dachary, Commercial Advisor to the Institute's General Management, said: "We are very interested in this issue, it helps us talk to internet providers. This legal instrument would be very useful in the difficult task of combating illegal gambling."
Technical representatives from the provincial Secretariat of Modernization acknowledged the challenges involved in DNS and IP-level blocking, with Alejandro Mildenberger, Advisor at the Secretariat, emphasizing that the approach should not be narrowly restrictive.
Mildenberger said: "It's not just about restricting, it's about proposing a gradual agenda and thinking through strategies within the context of hyperconnectivity."
The Entre Ríos lower chamber has separately been advancing two competing bills on online gambling regulation since early 2025, one focused on a provincial bettor registry and the other on a broader licensing framework, though neither has reached a final vote.
The cities of Mendoza and Buenos Aires have already moved in a similar direction, and the bill explicitly invites municipalities and communes within the province to enact their own complementary rules
