Kaizen Gaming Colombia, owner of the Betano.co brand, was authorized by Coljuegos to operate online betting in the country. With this new operator, there are now 16 web platforms that have the approval of the entity to market games of chance online.

“We continue to strengthen the online gaming industry. We hope that, with the entry of this new operator, we can continue to increase transfers for the health of Colombians. At this time, the platform is already operating for the betting public,” said Marco Emilio Hincapié, president of Coljuegos.

The entity is also in the process of authorizing an additional operator called Bingo Casino, which is expected to begin offering bets in the coming weeks.

It is worth mentioning that, by 2024, it is estimated that online betting portals will pay around $419,527 million to Coljuegos for exploitation rights, which represents an increase of 31% compared to the same period in 2023. All of these resources are transferred to the health system.

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“We are seeing that online betting is a sector of the economy that has driven the growth of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. That is why we are working to make the market even more attractive and to provide more options to bettors,” said the president.

According to financial projections, this new operator is expected to pay Coljuegos around $21.513 billion over the next five years for operating rights and administration costs, resources that can be transferred to subsidize health and scientific research.

The Illegal Operations Control Department destroyed 574 gambling items that had been seized because they were operating without authorization in departments such as Cundinamarca, Atlántico, Valle del Cauca, among others, and which stopped transferring around $63.545 million to the health system.

“The destroyed items were valued at around $169 million and belonged to criminal structures that were dedicated to operating games of chance and luck without authorization and without paying the respective monopoly rents,” said Marco Emilio Hincapié, president of Coljuegos.

Among the destroyed items were electronic slot machines, bingo chairs, roulette wheels, poker tables, Keno and online betting modules, each of them composed of computers, CPUs, televisions, ticket machines, among others.

“In total, we have completed 7,934 destroyed items, valued at more than $1.5 billion. Due to these illegal activities, the health system has lost more than $200 billion in recent years, resources that would have allowed us to serve more Colombians under the subsidized regime,” said the president of the entity.

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Hincapié also said that in the coming days, Coljuegos will continue destroying another 117 electronic slot machines, 350 bingo elements (chairs, tables and boards), 8 poker tables and 252 sports betting modules.

“Never before has an administration attacked illegality in the industry so strongly. We are doing this at the behest of our president Gustavo Petro, who has always asked us to fight corruption and to decisively strike the mafias that operate unauthorized games in various regions of the country,” said Hincapié.

It is worth mentioning that illegal gambling organizations in Colombia are failing to pay the State around $1.5 billion annually for exploitation rights, resources that could be allocated to the health of low-income citizens.

In 2023, the Tolima Lottery transferred a total of $6439 million to the health sector. These resources, for the most part, were generated as monopoly income and come from the total sales of the traditional lottery game achieved by the company in the same period.

Marco Emilio Hincapié Ramírez, president of Coljuegos, indicated that, by 2023, the Tolima Lottery recorded sales for a total of $24,762 million, which represented an increase of 23% compared to 2022.

“During the previous period, we were able to see how lottery game operators in the country considerably increased their sales. This is significant if we take into account that the more lottery tickets that are acquired by players, the greater the amount of resources that can be transferred to the health sector,” said the president.

Likewise, the official mentioned that, in 2022, transfers from the Tolima Lottery were $6331 million: “This indicates that, in the last two years, transfers to health from this lottery amounted to $12,770 million,” Hincapié said.

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Thus, it is worth noting that, in total, the 15 authorized operating companies transferred $417,131 million during the periods 2022 and 2023 for all concepts (monopoly income, tax on winners, tax on foreign lotteries, and expired prizes), with sales that reached $1.6 billion in the last two years.

“We want to highlight the contribution that the Tolima Lottery has made to the health of the department. Likewise, we invite all players to buy only from authorized distributors and their trusted lotteries,” concluded the president of the entity.