Mexico: New legislation to modernize current gaming framework being developed

Mexico's Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB), headed by Rosa Icela Rodríguez, and representatives of the gaming sector are working on a bill to modernize the current Gaming and Raffles Law of 1947, which will be reviewed by the Congress.

According to local media, Rosa Rodríguez met with members of the National Council of the Entertainment Industry (CONAIET) to analyze a new legislative framework to adequately regulate both land-based and online gaming and thus unify criteria that will allow, on the one hand, to improve the collection of taxes for this activity, and on the other hand, to avoid the extortions suffered by these businesses.

During the meeting, the businessmen requested, among other things, that this regulation should generate a single federal tax and avoid state taxes. They also expressed their uncertainty because of the constant rotation at the SEGOB. Every year and a half or two years, there is a change of directors in the Gaming and Sweepstakes sector, and when a new one arrives, they bring their own rules and impose their modifications to the regulation, the businessmen said.

The director of CONAIET, Francisco Gutiérrez Caballero, estimated that this industry generates some 150,000 direct jobs and another 50,000 indirect jobs, and that by 2030 the gaming halls could attract more than 10 million visitors per year, doubling the nearly 5 million people who visited these businesses in 2024.

For that reason, the entrepreneur celebrated the political will of President Claudia Sheinbaum's government to regulate the casino business with better practices, which, according to him, is seen as a source of investment for both national and foreign companies.

Another objective of the new Gaming and Sweepstakes Law, for Gutiérrez Caballero, is to review the management of casinos operating on internet platforms domiciled in many cases outside the country.

According to CONAIET, it is estimated that online casinos move more than USD 3 billion per year and, between 2024 and 2034, could present growth rates of 7.7% per year in Mexico.

Such growth is supported by the high internet penetration that resulted in more than 18 million active accounts of Mexicans in different online gambling platforms by the end of 2024, when in 2023 there were 15 million accounts.

Furthermore, the head of CONAIET stated that the gaming halls have made substantial investments in these years to guarantee the security of their visitors, increase the quality of their services and comply with all the rules established by the authorities, among them Policies for the Prevention of Money Laundering, as well as sending information in real time to SAT of thousands of slot machines in more than 400 casinos operating in the country.

Rosa Icela Rodriguez and Congressman Ricardo Monreal

According to the news portal México Informa, this is not a foreign issue for the Chamber of Deputies, since the leader of the majority Morena party, Ricardo Monreal, also received a delegation of businessmen to discuss the scope and the need for a new reform.

Considering that, with the new technologies, the online gaming activity has skyrocketed, CONAIET's idea is that, due to its huge growth and to prevent it from becoming a black market, it should be regulated, which would give certainty to the user and owner.

As a result, the games would be fully registered in an official database at the federal government, which would prevent them from becoming clandestine games without paying taxes and with a high risk of fraud.