Licensing and regulation: Can we get a licence?

Mexico's licensing framework operates through the federal permit system created under the 1947 Ley Federal de Juegos y Sorteos and administered by the Dirección General de Juegos y Sorteos within SEGOB. The implementing Reglamento, amended in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 16 November 2023, ties each permit to a specific event or establishment: an operator cannot cover multiple physical locations under a single permit, and any change of location requires an entirely new permit application. This is a confirmed, primary-instrument rule rather than guidance, and it is the clearest durable structure in the current regime. No standalone online-gaming licence category exists, so online sports betting and other digital wagering products are folded into the same general federal permit regime that governs physical establishments, with no bespoke digital licence, capital requirement, or technical-standards track identified. Three pending reform tracks — a SEGOB executive draft, a federal bill, and a Mexico City Congress initiative — all target this structural gap, but none has been enacted, so the establishment-bound permit regime remains the operative framework for market entry. On permit duration, counsel-confirmed (Ramparts, 20 September 2026): a pre-Decree permit runs to 25 years and, if renewed, is capped at 15 years, and the Reglamento article 33 term applies both to new permits and to pre-Decree permits where the holder re-applies. This diverges from published law-firm analysis (Greenberg Traurig), which reads the 2023 reform as re-basing existing permissions to a non-renewable 15-year term without extensions. The counsel position is carried as authoritative; the divergence is recorded rather than silently resolved.