Colombia has become a benchmark in terms of regulated gambling, said Roger Carrillo, president of COLJUEGOS

Roger Carrillo began the speech by thanking organizers for the invitation to GAT 2023. "A business event for the gaming industry that brings together suppliers, regulators, operators, manufacturers, speakers, businessmen, investors."

"Activities like these encourage us to reaffirm the importance of betting on the gaming industry in Colombia." 

He also added that these spaces are a valuable scenario to strengthen relationships within the sector that allow the construction of projects and new businesses internationally. "Our country has a portfolio of regulated games of chance that allowed us to become a benchmark for internationally recognized games for having a solid and well-structured reputation.”

Later, he provided some figures related to the gaming sector in Colombia: “By December 2022, localized games were the ones that made the greatest contribution to the market, reaching 319,710,000 pesos with a growth of 33% compared to the previous year, and thanks to the increase in electronic slot machines, which in 2022 exceeded 100,000, with a growth of 9%, and this leads to 3,428 establishments that with this represent a growth of 14% compared to 2021”.

He also added that this year localized games contributed with more than 30 billion pesos to health, and highlighted the growth of Internet-operated games in the country. "For 2020 the level of income from online gaming was 8 million pesos, for 2021 it doubled to 16 million pesos and for 2022 it was 226 million pesos."

Then he added: "In January 2023, transfers from COLJUEGOS to the Colombian health sector grew by 24.3% compared to the same period in 2022", and made a breakdown between the different types of gambling.

Later, he highlighted the work of COLJUEGOS with the different operators to consolidate strategies related to responsible gambling, and assured that work together with the unions and the national government should be a priority.

“With my arrival at the Presidency of COLJUEGOS, we started hard work. We want the sector to continue growing, in a context where more investors arrive every day, where we innovate, where we have the greatest technological advances and where we have the best practices for a sustainable and responsible operation”.

“We continue under the line of teamwork, the national government represented by Coljuegos, the trade unions, the operators, the gaming sector industry, so that we continue to grow and also generate more resources for the health of Colombians. So we predict that 2023 will be the year of the consolidation of relations between unions and operators, opening new modalities of games and raising awareness about the importance of betting on the health of Colombians”, he concluded.