The hunches and premonitions about who is going to be the next president run through all Argentines today. Less than a month before the elections, all the talks inevitably end up falling on the future of the country starting October 22. But while the pollsters remain in the eye of the storm due to the failures they have made in recent times, Argentines now have the possibility of being the ones to take the risk if their perception of political reality is accurate.
The sports betting company bplay opened the possibility that, through its platform, any user can bet on who will be the next president. As if it were the result of a football match, bettors can choose how much to bet and which candidate to bet on and wait for election day to find out if their political intuition pays off.
In a Latin American regional context in which the online betting market is growing by leaps and bounds and countries are in the process of creating regulatory frameworks for its operation, in Argentina the frenzy to bet knows no limitations and is encouraged to disembark in the policy.
Dues. “With a purely entertainment purpose, the Product team developed four markets linked to the upcoming Argentine presidential elections,” explained Sebastián Leoy, Producer Owner of Sports Betting at bplay. Upon entering the company’s site, each bettor finds several options to put together the bet that most satisfies them. So, You can only bet on who will be the next president, whether or not there will be a second round and even who would be part of that supposed runoff..
According to the odds paid by the bets, Javier Milei is the great candidate to be the next president of the Argentines. The victory of the libertarian candidate pays 1.35, meaning that the amount bet is multiplied by that figure: if you bet 1,000 pesos, if you win you would get 1,350. Patricia Bullrich appears as the second candidate, with a quota of 3.80, and in third place is Sergio Massa with 7.25. Myriam Bregman and Juan Schiaretti, the other two candidates who will participate in the October elections, are not even considered among the possible winners. Realpolitik.
These scenarios change when the bet becomes more particular. By case, Although, according to the bookmaker, Massa is the third most likely candidate, a victory for him in October is seen as more likely than one for Bullrich.. The victory of the Union for the Homeland candidate pays 5.00 against 6.75 for the former Minister of Security.
“The team, through these options, seeks to create its own unique markets in the industry. To generate the quotas, the results provided by private consultants are periodically studied and floors, ceilings and projections are evaluated. Furthermore, a margin of error is defined, and then it is turned into a quota,” they stated from bplay, a company that is part of the Boldt group, controlled by the Tabanelli family, one of the most important business conglomerates in the gaming sector, with participation in Argentina and other South American countries.
The predictions about the presidential elections are not the only ones referring to national news that bplay ventured into. In August they had launched another bet whose main theme was the monthly inflation index published by INDEC. “As bplay is the only company in the online betting market that is one hundred percent Argentine, we try to put ourselves in the customer’s head, and clearly Argentines, if there is something that is constantly on their mind, it is inflation.” Leoy said. Thus, bettors could bet on what the final number of the consumer price index would be. The bet that paid the least was the one that placed inflation between 5.9 and 7.1 percent, which ended up being the winning option since the INDEC announced that in July it was 6.3%. That bet, like that of the elections, quickly gained followers, since, within a few hours of being published on the website, hundreds of players had already participated.
As explained by the company, “these initiatives aim to differentiate and entertain. The profit limit is low. You can earn at most 10 thousand pesos.” The company decides how much is the maximum that can be bet and, in addition, in this way it prevents someone with inside information from breaking the bank.
Trend. The bet created by bplay is unprecedented in Argentina, but it is something that has been happening in other places in the world. Perhaps the most resonant occurred in 2013, when the Irish company Paddy Power launched a bet on who would be the next Pope after the resignation of Benedict XVI. Just on the first day of being launched on the market, the bet had already accumulated more than 400 thousand dollars from players who opted for their favorite. Curiously, Jorge Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis, was not among the options and thus only those who had opted for the “others” option when putting their money at stake could become winners.
Something similar happened in the United States in 2020, when the presidential elections between Joe Biden and Donald Trump raised close to a billion dollars worldwide among all the betting houses that offered the possibility of playing around the elections.
Inventiveness, furthermore, does not stop only in politics. Questions like “Will the existence of alien life be proven before the end of the year?” or “How much will Bitcoin be trading at at the end of the year?” They are part of the offer of some of these online sites.
The online betting industry has set Latin America as the next market to exploit. In fact, Lula da Silva issued a Provisional Measure to regulate them in Brazil until the law that is under debate in the Senate is approved. The country expects to raise nearly 420 million dollars from taxes on this practice. That amount, they estimate, will reach one billion dollars in the next five years.
Chile also has its own law under parliamentary debate and, although there is some resistance, the government of Gabriel Boric wants to enact it in order to ensure the income it could bring to the state coffers.
In Argentina, meanwhile, there is no regulation that covers the entire country, but various gaming sectors have expressed the need to create an ideal regulatory framework. Meanwhile, bets such as who will be the next president captivate players and grow the market.
