Buenos Aires, Argentina – It is December in the capital of Buenos Aires, and the summertime temperatures have soared to 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit).
The sun beats relentlessly on the corrugated metal roofs of Villa Fiorito, a working-class neighbourhood south of Argentina’s capital city.
Teenagers in flip-flops ride their motorbikes through the dirt streets. Other kids look for shady spots to rest and rinse their feet with a garden hose.
Carla G, who requested anonymity, is one of the neighbourhood teenagers. At age 18, she is nearing the end of high school. One of her favourite pastimes was playing football with her friends at the neighbourhood sports club, not far from where Diego Maradona, a legendary player, grew up.
But her hobbies took a backseat last June when she took up online gambling.
“Almost all of my friends from school are involved in online gambling in one way or another,” Carla said. “They admit it’s a problem.”
Carla is part of a growing trend in Argentina’s society: teenagers and young adults gambling their money online.
Last October, the ombudsman of the city of Buenos Aires published a report that found that nearly a quarter of local students aged 12 to 19 had gambled online.
The vast majority, 67 percent, cited the need for fast cash as their motivation. As poverty rises in Argentina, experts fear that online betting will become all the more tempting — and illegal platforms, as well as legitimate ones, will proliferate.
But the question of regulating online gambling has proven contentious, particularly under the presidency of staunch free-market libertarian Javier Milei.
Carla’s story
For Carla, it was the rush of adrenaline she felt — and the need to help her family escape poverty — that pushed her towards internet gambling.
The 18-year-old lives with her older sister Mayra, 26, and her six-year-old nephew. The family relies on Mayra’s income to get by.
But in April, Mayra lost her gig at a used furniture store. To generate income, Mayra shifted to washing her neighbours’ linens for cash.
The family, however, has struggled to cover its bills. Mayra said she sometimes goes to bed without dinner, for want of money.
So Carla decided to take matters into her own hands. She said she replaced her regular football practices with hours spent locked alone in her room, working as a cashier at a virtual casino.
A close friend had suggested the job to her. “Virtual bingo is so widespread in the neighbourhood that most families participate, making it feel normal,” Carla said.
But she argues that her job sucked her into an online Ponzi scheme, one that relied on an ever-expanding body of recruits to pay into the system.
“Cashiers collect money from bettors and earn a commission for each new player they recruit,” Carla explained.
“But there’s a catch: Let’s say a cashier collects $100 in bets, and the bettors win $150. The bingo administrators give the cashier $50 to distribute as winnings, but she still owes those $50 to the administrators. To avoid paying out of her own pocket, the cashier must recruit new bettors to cover her debt.”
Carla remembers she felt pressure to attract new gamblers on social media, sharing links and promotional posts to advertise her bingo ring.
“It gets increasingly difficult to find participants,” she said. She ultimately left the job in November, after coming to a point where she was no longer able to attract new gamblers and earn commissions.
But her older sister Mayra had also become a cashier, and she continues to work on an illegal gambling platform.
She explained that she spends up to five hours a day on the gambling apps, losing money that she otherwise would spend on food.
As she spoke, her phone hummed incessantly with messages from casino operators, buzzing like a persistent mosquito. She owed them $18.
“If I could turn back time, I would never have gotten involved in this. It’s like the drug trade. It forces you to bring friends and family into this system, even though you know it’s dangerous,” Mayra said.
An alternative to poverty
In Tandil, a small, agricultural town in the Buenos Aires province, history teacher Eugenia Erreguerena saw the uptick in gambling begin during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Forced to isolate to stop the spread of the virus, her students turned increasingly to digital spaces to socialise.
“For the kids, there isn’t much distinction between playing video games and entering a betting platform,” Erreguerena said. “Both activities are part of the same endless scrolling experience.”
She observed that the boys in her classroom are more likely to gamble. The ombudsman’s survey found that 34 percent of teenage boys placed bets online, compared to 13 percent of girls.
“Online casinos serve as a non-place where boys, in particular, can embody an aspirational alter ego,” Erreguerena said. Some of her students have told her they have lost more than $500 on a single bet, and they sometimes come to her, asking for money.
Experts and critics have credited some of the growth in online betting to economic instability in Argentina, which has long suffered from spiralling inflation and burdensome foreign debt.
In December 2023, President Milei took office, promising dramatic austerity measures to rein in inflation and pull the country out of recession.
A self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, he brought his “chainsaw” approach to bureaucracy, regulations and public spending, reducing or freezing all three.
The results have been mixed. Monthly inflation has dropped, and Argentina’s peso has grown stronger. Even the gross domestic product (GDP) has shown promising signs.
But poverty under Milei’s administration has also increased. The number of Argentinians under the poverty line reached more than 50 percent in the past year, and unemployment continues to rise.
Erreguerena explained that her students see online gambling as an alternative, a way to break free from the cycle of poverty. After all, they face limited opportunities in rural areas like Tandil.
“The jobs they can aspire to, like working as rural labourers or in the village, feel like forced labour because of the extreme low wages,” Erreguerena said.
“And the kids need money, like everyone else. A night out can cost $40, and gathering crates of vegetables won’t get them there.”
Increased visibility
But the burden of gambling-induced debt can follow teenagers into adulthood.
In a 2024 study of 9,000 young Argentinians aged 15 to 29, an estimated 40 percent admitted to gambling recently.
Of those who said they were gambling at the time of the survey, the most active age bracket was between 25 and 29: More than 26 percent said they were gambling at present.
Martín Romero, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, led the study. He credits the growth in online betting, in part, to the increasing visibility of the platforms.
Just this month, the website Sportsbet became a major sponsor for the popular Argentinian football team Club Atlético Independiente, its brand emblazoned on the front of its jerseys.
And two of the biggest football clubs in the country already count gambling platforms among their sponsors: The team River Plate is associated with the betting site Codere, while Boca Juniors receives sponsorship from Betsson.
“In recent years, we have seen a dramatic increase in the aggressive advertising of betting platforms,” Romero said.
“This surge is supported by major Argentinian football teams, tournaments, players, influencers and streamers who serve as role models for many children, adolescents and young adults.”
He also pointed out that Argentina has no age restrictions for gambling, making the country an appealing destination for companies seeking to expand their market.
“Casinos that relocate from Europe due to stricter regulations can easily establish themselves here,” he said.
Legislating change
Romero is hoping to change that. He was among the experts who helped draft a bill that would require gambling platforms to adopt biometric screening tools to prevent children and adolescents from accessing them.
The bill also called for limits on how gambling sites can advertise, more transparency about the platforms’ operations, and penalties for unauthorised sites that target minors.
But while a version of the bill passed Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies in November, with 54 percent of the vote, the legislation faces an uphill battle in the Senate.
The Association of Lotteries, Casinos and Quinielas of Argentina (ALEA) has lobbied against the bill, and Milei has pledged to veto it if it passes, as part of his push for deregulation.
Under his administration, Argentina has made it legal for teenagers as young as 13 to invest in the stock market.
Members of his party have likewise argued that regulating online gambling would place unnecessary limits on individual freedoms.
“This is a responsibility for families, not the state,” Lilia Lemoine, Milei’s former stylist and a member of the Chamber of Deputies, said during November’s debate.
“Once again, the state is overstepping its bounds when it comes to individual decisions, and our government is against that.”
But Romero said this policy helps give parents the impression “that, when teenagers place bets, they are taking their first steps as investors in finance”.
He also pointed out that, in November, Milei appointed Juan Bautista Ordonez as the government secretary for children, adolescents and families. Ordonez boasts a background in gambling: He previously served as CEO of Codere, an online betting site.
“I’m not surprised that Milei wants to veto this law,” Romero said.
But he added that the need for regulations is pressing. Based on his statistics, two out of every three Argentinian pesos teens receive from their parents for daily expenses are simply gambled away.
