argument as far back as 2011, when he told local press that casinos, "even if the activities they carry out are not illegal, are the right opportunity for laundering money." Noboa returned to the casino question in August 2025. Tis time the proposal was framed in different terms. Under a question prepared for a popular consultation scheduled for the end of the year, casinos would be confined to five-star hotels; the state would take 25 per cent of their turnover from the activity and the proceeds would be earmarked for the fight against chronic child malnutrition and for school meals. "A popular consultation will be held asking the people about
issues that have been of popular interest and urgency for change for years." Noboa wrote on the social network X. However it was no to avail. On September 4 2025 Te Constitutional Court rejected the casino question alongside three others —ruling them contrary to the constitutional framework and reformable only by constituent assembly, not by amendment. On the casino question itself the court was particularly harsh arguing that the justification provided by the executive did not “not provide the voter with the minimum indispensable information to deliberate and decide in a free, informed and autonomous manner." Unperturbed in November 2025 Noboa put four further
questions to the country, including a proposal to convene a constituent assembly that could have rewritten the constitutional provisions underpinning the casino ban. Voters rejected all four. In May Ecuador’s attorney general firmly reaffirmed the country’s blanket ban on gambling, ruling out any attempt to operate casinos or gaming halls—whether for profit or under the guise of charitable activity. In Official Letter 16528, issued on 4 May 2026, Attorney
General Juan Carlos Larrea Valencia responded to a query from Juan Xavier Cordovéz Ortega, head of the Junta de Beneficencia de Guayaquil. Te Junta, the only entity legally authorised to run a lottery in Ecuador, sought clarity on whether private operators could bypass the casino ban by operating through non-profit foundations, and whether any exceptions existed beyond those explicitly recognised in law. Te answer was unequivocal: they cannot, and no additional
exceptions apply. Te opinion, which is binding on public institutions, draws
on long-standing legal provisions. Supreme Decree 130 of 1937 prohibits games of chance involving wagers where outcomes depend solely on luck, while Article 1482 of the Civil Code classifies such activities as contracts with an unlawful object. Te 2011 referendum further reinforced this prohibition at the constitutional level, explicitly banning casinos and gaming halls.
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SPORTS BETTING While the door is closing on land based gambling expansion sports betting is seeing a legal expansion. In May 2022 the Junta de Beneficencia de Guayaquil launched a mobile sports betting platform under the brand BET593. Te platform offers betting on more than 1,500 local and international sporting events and was rolled out alongside a catalogue of online games that already included video bingo, casino-style games and traditional lottery draws. Within months BET593 had signed sponsorship agreements
with most of the leading clubs in Ecuadorian football as well as the Ecuadorian Tennis Federation. Te way for online sports betting has also opened up. On May 11 2023 Finance Minister Pablo Arosemena presented to the National Assembly a much wider tax reform package that, for the first time, brought online sports betting within the Ecuadorian tax system. Called the Organic Law for the Strengthening of the Family
Economy, the bill was unveiled by then President Guillermo Lasso at the presidential palace in Quito, who put its fiscal cost at US$195 million and described its purpose as "injecting money in the shortest possible time to families and, in turn, to the national economy". Te online sports betting element was just one small part of
this overall tax reform. It imposed an income tax on sports betting operators resident in the country, set at 15 per cent of GGR, together with a 15 per cent withholding tax on player winnings. Where a bet was placed through an operator that was not resident in Ecuador, the player would be required to assume the tax on the value of their bet. However, the bill arrived in the middle of a constitutional
emergency. Six days after it was introduced, on May 17 2023, Lasso invoked the rarely tested, and ominously named, constitutional clause known as muerte cruzada, or "mutual death" clause, to dissolve the National Assembly in the face of an impeachment process. Te clause had been written into Ecuador's 2008 constitution but had never before been used by a sitting president. On the very same day he decreed the dissolution of the
Assembly, Lasso reissued the Organic Law for the Strengthening of the Family Economy as Decree-Law 742 which included the sports betting regime. Officials from the Internal Revenue Service (SRI), told local press that the new sports betting tax was expected to raise more than US$10 million a year and would take effect on January 1 2024. On June 16 2023 the Constitutional Court issued its dictamen on the package and unanimously endorsed the reform. After he succeeded President Lasso, Daniel Noboa
postponed the implementation date of the sports betting tax
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