Argentina’s leading gambling body has urged operators to adopt the new .bet.ar domain names in a bid to build confidence in the jurisdiction’s regulated system.
Organisations will be able to register their .bet.ar domains from 21 July, with all requiring the approval of an Argentine regulatory body.
The Association of Argentina’s State Lotteries (ALEA), which includes state organisations that regulate, administer and control recreational activities in the country, said the use of the suffix allows the public to differentiate legal gambling operators from unauthorised gambling sites.
ALEA said the adoption of bet.ar will provide state lotteries with a precise tool to combat illegal gambling through procedures for the control and identification of platforms that operate outside the domain area.
Businesses in the wider digital ecosystem, such as telecoms and banking groups, will also be able to identify authorised operations by the deployment of the suffix, ALEA said.
It also added that some provinces have already officially announced the use of this domain zone for their authorised online gambling. The regulator in each of Argentina’s provinces will have the responsibility for approving applicants to use the new domains.
In a statement, ALEA said: “The authorisation of the area, for the state lotteries of our country, will allow the homogenisation of the records of the web pages of online gambling platforms authorised by the administrative and gambling regulatory bodies; the clear identification of the operators and platforms authorised by the regulatory bodies of each jurisdiction; and it will strengthen communication strategies to identify illegal and unauthorised operators and sites.”
The development was made possible by federal legislation Resolution 42/2019 and Provision 68/2019 and approved by the Legal and Technical Secretariat of the Nation, through the National Directorate of the Internet Domain Registry.
The city of Buenos Aires was the first region in Argentina to formalise its online gambling licensing requirements, having approved regulations for igaming in February 2020. Most provinces are now either considering or moving towards regulating gambling in the wake of Covid-19, ALEA said recently.
