Paraguay opened its market. Ecuador voted to stay shut. Both within a year
Law 7438/2025 ended Paraguay's state gambling monopoly and licensed online casino gaming through competitive tender. Two months earlier, Ecuadorian voters rejected reopening casinos for the second time in fourteen years. Two neighbours, opposite answers, and a regulatory map that looks nothing like it did in 2024.
South American gambling regulation moved further in the last twelve months than in the previous ten years, and it moved in two directions at once.
**Paraguay opened up.** Law 7438/2025 legalised online casino gaming and replaced the country's state monopoly with a competitive concession system. CONAJZAR, the regulator, now sits under the national tax authority DNIT and can award up to three licences per vertical by public tender. Prizes above Gs 500,000 — about $67 — carry an 8% withholding tax deducted by the operator. For a market that until recently ran through a single exclusive operator, that is a structural change rather than a tweak.
**Ecuador went the other way, by vote.** Casinos have been banned there since a 2011 referendum, with Article 236 of the criminal code carrying one to three years for operating one. A **referendum in November 2025 proposed reopening them and was rejected** — the second time in fourteen years Ecuadorians have been asked and given the same answer.
Online is a separate track there, and only half-resolved. The Organic Sports Law, approved 19 December 2025 and effective 11 February 2026, granted legal status to online sports betting, building on a 2019 Attorney General's opinion that "sports forecasting" is not gambling in the strict sense because it depends on the bettor's knowledge. Poker is not sports betting, and nothing in that law changed the casino position. Since April 2026 the tax authority has applied 15% VAT to betting and online gaming services regardless of where the operator sits — the test is whether the user is in Ecuador.
The **Dominican Republic**, meanwhile, has quietly had the most complete framework in the region all along: the Dirección de Casinos y Juegos de Azar licenses online poker as its own category, and table-game winnings are typically untaxed at the player level.
Set those three beside Costa Rica — which issues no gambling licence at all while appearing in the footer of half the industry — and the lesson for anyone choosing where to play is that regional reputation is worthless as a proxy. The frameworks differ completely between countries that sit next to each other on a map.
Player pages, legal positions and tax treatment for Paraguay, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic are now live.