Latin America is not just a beautiful part of the world, but also an emerging and highly promising market of betting and binary options trading. Statistics shows that the region has over 600 million inhabitants and most of them have an access to the Internet. That being said, people in Latin America have a strong interest and enough income to test their skills in online gambling and in trading binaries.
Is Latin America prepared to become an attractive place for options trading and betting activities? Let’s try to figure out.
Legal Status of Online Betting and Binary Options
Every country in Latin America is unique, but there is one common thing among all of them – unclear regulation in regards to placing bets online or trading binary options. Although, according eSportApuestas.es, the authorities in Latin American states have neutral or sometimes even negative attitude towards betting, the majority of the legal acts in this regard have not been updated for decades. For example, in Brazil all forms of gambling have been prohibited since the year 1941. A similar situation is in Mexico. The governments have been trying to promote the laws for supervising the online betting industry ever since, yet most of them have got bogged down in the efforts to arrive at a consensus. Nonetheless, the citizens of these countries still take part in the online gambling activities.
In Uruguay, Peru, Colombia and Chile, where online gambling is legal, there are still just a few local operators receive the fully recognized license. That is why the most prominent betting operators in this region come from overseas.
Now let’s take a look at the binary options. Options trading is legal in all Latin American countries and there is a certain degree of regulation present in this market. Like in the case with the online betting, there are almost no local brokers in Latin America. Most countries stick to the foreign binary providers like 24Option, IQ Option etc.
Binary Options and Betting: Current Market Conditions
Although lottery shops, casinos remain the popular gambling destinations in Latin America, they mostly enjoy the attention from the older population. As for millennials, they are more keen on making bets online.
Newzoo has recently published its 2017 rankings list which shows that the demand for online gambling is soaring in Latin America. Mexico and Brazil have made 12th and 13th places on the top 100 list by game revenues.
Since Latin Americans are fond of football, baseball and racing, foreign sportsbooks like Bet365, William Hill and Betsson have been pretty successful at offering their services in this region. With an established local presence, the sports betting operators have proved to be friendly to Latin American clients. Most websites are additionally available in Portuguese and Spanish with fully operational local customer support.
As for binary options, Brazil has certainly become the key market in the continent. A lot of binary brokerages that decided to focus on Latin America market have chosen this country. Moreover, top options broker even facilitated payment procedure for Brazilian clients, allowing them to conduct all payments with BRL. Other Latin American countries do enjoy such a privilege, but we tend to think that it is only the matter of time.