Received word from a couple different people that the Mexican govt. is definitely looking into a .fr/.be/.es-type model for PokerStars.

Those three are all very different models aren't they?
es - spain only
fr - only .fr in france but eu can also play on fr
be - stars.uk type model where they can still play on worldwide player pool

@sirin...

Thanks for the reply. What makes you think this?

hehe

The bill has to pass a vote in the Senate then receive Presidential approval. Then the regulator has 180 days to get the licensing process ready.

Senate won't meet again till Jan, then President has 30 days to approve the bill.

add it up and you get to the end of August.

why not belize?


i heard its beautiful, great weather, only country in cent. america that speaks english, the gov and immigration is exremely corrupt, after one yr of living there you can become perm resident

i wish there was a discussion on where would be the next best destination not too far from the US


btw- does this new bill include sporsbetting too?

You're missing his point. He's never seen any.

After reading through as much material as I can on this matter (using Google Translate to turn Spanish into broken English), and also surfing through the 2+2 and Latin American forums, I can’t seem to find any concrete evidence that the legislation contains plans to shut Mexico off from the rest of the world.
http://calvinayre.com/2014/12/04/pok...osed-new-laws/

i bet the politician who wrote the act doesnt even play poker and doesnt understand the importance of a non segregated market and how much more they can profit from a non segregated market

obv mexico has a tiny indepenent market freaking politicians

Joss, do you or anyone else know off-hand if Mexico counts as 3% of Stars, et. al.'s market share?

Just wondering about the possibility of getting "grey marketed" (under the UK regulations) during that limbo period between the Mexican Senate passing a bill and the actual regulations being finalized.

(i.e. Pokerstars and others pulling out of the market early, even before their operations technically become illegal under the new law (if that is what ends up happening)).

Mexico is so corrupt and a "bribe" economy, seems to me if Mexico was a really important market to Amaya, bagmen could be dispatched to the appropriate Mexican personnel and given of bundles of "Franklins" to take care of any potential problem.

The thing is mexico as corrupt as it may be, is a country with 110M+ people with a great potential in the long run, the mexican gov isnt passing this bill for online poker.

This bill is in order to regulate the gambling market, primarly live, it also happens to attend the online issues, but is primarly seeking sportsbetting and lotto games.

One thing is certain the bill is coming, how badly will it affect us? We wont know for sure just yet.

Legally you can become a resident after a year in Country with a two week break. I doubt it's any more corrupt here than most Latin American countries - and maybe most Western ones. It's just so small everyone knows someone who knows someone so there are no secrets.

Honest answer is I don't know, but I'd be surprised if Mexico breached the 3% limit. However, UK licensed operators must legally justify their operations in ALL countries where they don't have a national license--the 3% limit is a threshold for the amount of justification the UKGC wants to see.

Since the old laws were written so long before internet gambling, I think Stars are perfectly justified in arguing that it is not against Mexican law for an operator based in the IoM to offer internet poker to Mexican residents. I would be confident that they will continue there up to the implementation date and beyond (if they get a license).

@Muddy 7 - you seem to have skipped the first few pages of the the thread - the bill doesn't say anything about segregating the Mexican market from the rest of the World - but it does use some rather ill-defined language including "se atiendan" which make it appear that game play must be run on servers based in Mexico through the .mx.com site.

When I first suggested that the market looked like it might be segregated in an article for pokerfuse PRO, I hedged my language deliberately, because the wording--and I speak Spanish and live in Peru--was unclear.

I expected to hear quickly from PokerStars or one of the other major operators if my interpretation was wrong--whenever I get something wrong, I normally get a blistering email from someone--but my inbox is empty.

And I'm not giving away commercial secrets if I say that we have corporate or individual subscriptions from all the major poker operators--so they've all read my take on the issue.

Hi, I'm Gerardo and I'm a Senior Writer at CodigoPoker Mexico. I will try to explain some things that seem to be quite unclear about the new law, sorry if this is a long post and if I repeat some of the stuff already discussed.

-The new law will replace a 1947 law that was created to stop a political group from getting resources from casinos. This group was affiliated with PRI and both the party and the group still exist.

-This is important because the owner of Caliente is member of a similar group at the same party. He tried to launch his online poker site two years ago but it was a complete failure. The rumor is that he will launch the site again, he's already organizing some live tournaments in Baja California. The rumor also goes that he will be launching a live circuit. That is quite possible because Caliente has casinos everywhere.

-As almost everybody knows, the law was approved by the Chamber of Representatives. Now it will go to the Senate but will ve voted untill January or February (this year the Senate officially started sesions until april) after that it will be approved by the president. After that it will be published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación, law will be operational two months after its published in the DOF.

-After it's fully operational, the goverment must create a new Gaming Institute. This institute will have 3 months to publish the guidelines for the casinos and online sites. This is quite important because at this point we will have more info about some gray areas such as online poker or live rake.

-The meeting you write about JC and the goverment is also something that is, in my opinion, just a political act from Fernando Zarate. Zarate WAS the president of a group created to write the new bill, this group gave this task to a lawyer named Miguel Ontiveros who is a criminal lawyer. Ontiveros wrote the bill based on the spanish and french models because, according to him, those were similar to the mexican market.

As said before, Zarate is no longer president of that group, he was removed after PAN representatives accused him of protecting Caliente and Televisa, in fact the group no longer exists. Zarate has no political power in this because he is a representative and the bill has already been approved by the representatives.

-It is important to clear that when the bill was approved, many representatives tried to change many articles, None of those changes were approved.

Sadly, goverment doesn't care about poker. The main discussions were about horse racing and new casino-resorts that will be built in places such as Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Los Cabos. Every resort with a casino will have less restrictions in order to "improve turism".

There are a lot of rumors in the air but I think is very important to keep all the information as clear as possible. If you have any particular questions I will gladly try to answer them.

Thanks for the detailed explanation/background Gerardo.

Thanks

Gerardo,
you post didnt cover sportsbetting, and sportbetting sites not located in mexico, what do you think will happen after the new bill is operational? Can residents of Mexico still place wagers on sites not located in Mexico?

Thanks for your post

Thanks for the background and update, Gerardo. Political insight into Mexican legislation is difficult to glean second hand. I appreciate you providing some background here.

You can't get a pm here as yet, so feel free to email me at gzeshlaw at g mail dot com. I would like to pursue this matter.

Gracias!!!

At this point things are pretty unclear. Let me explain: As xPeru said, the new bill uses ill-defined language.

The bill doesn't separate between online poker or sportsbetting, there's a section about online betting sites so we may assume that wahtever happens to online poker will happen to online sportsbetting sites outside the us.

We will have to wait to the creation of the new Gaming Institute to get more info about this subject.

Gzesh: email sent

Feel free to add me if you have any questions about this, I will try to help as much as I can altough I think is very important to keep posting here so everybody has access to the info.

Skype: arroyo2153
FB: Gerardo Arroyo Gonzalez
Twitter: @gerardoarroyo_

Sorry if this isn't aloud, please admin remove it if you need to.

sorry if it's already been posted, but does anyone have contact information for the relevant politicians? so we can voice our opinions on how they are making a massive mistake business-wise and economically.

I ****ing love mexico. Not trying to sit back, do nothing, and get forced out of the country I adore.

Hey all. So if anything does happen, it won't be for another 6 months at least even if they announce it?