Vidal hedges bets in bid to tackle gambling
Buenos Aires province is overloaded with gambling options. During her election campaign, Governor María Eugenia Vidal vowed to tackle the problem, but she is finding that lengthy licences and pushback from the racing industry have stacked the odds against her. As experts warn that the resources to treat addiction are insufficient, it seems all bets are off.
Mar del Plata, the country’s bestknown seaside city, has it all: beaches, sweeping coastlines, chu
rros, its own film festival… and seven gaming halls.
No printing mistake here. There are four bingo halls and three casinos that stay open well past the summer tourist season, drawing in thousands of the city’s 700,000 inhabitants, with the inevitable result that more than a fair few become addicted to gambling.
One thing is clear: the number of gambling options on offer in Buenos Aires province is completely out of control. At the beginning of 2018, the country’s largest province had 46 bingo halls and 12 casinos, most of them located in coastal towns and the poorest areas of Greater Buenos Aires. The district has a whopping 22,400 slot machines — that’s twice the number than in the entirety of Chile.
Since taking office in late 2015, Buenos Aires province Governor María Eugenia Vidal, of the ruling Cambiemos (Let’s Change) coalition, has vowed to tackle this issue.
“Not a single new gaming hall” was her motto, and soon after she began leading the nation’s largest and most populous province (after some initial doubts) she thwarted an attempt to set up a new bingo hall in Puente La Noria, a key intersection of the workingclass districts of Lomas de Zamora and La Matanza.