SÁB 11 DE MAYO DE 2024 - 16:45hs.
Mansueto Almeida, Secretary of the SEAE

"Finance studies a project so that sports betting arrives soon to Brazil"

The secretary of economic development, Mansueto de Almeida, reported that the Ministry is advancing a study to legalize online sports betting. 'It can be a very important gaming modelity in Brazil, nowadays people use internet sites hosted in other countries to play and the Government does not collect anything,' says Mansueto, who clarifies that it is also necessary to have an agency independent regulatory and oversight bodies.

"Finance studies a project so that sports betting arrives soon to Brazil"

Does the Ministry of Finance consider the possibility of having sports betting online soon?
One thing that is already launched in Brazil is a study for us to legalize these bets online. They are bets that people make to identify the team that will win, the score of the game, in football, basketball or volleyball. This is already common in several countries of the world, but in Brazil does not yet have legislation. Usually people use internet sites hosted in other countries to play and consequently the government does not collect anything at all.

What kind of work is doing the government, your secretary, that we could anticipate? In which stage is this discussion?
The stage is well advanced, even at the beginning of this year we already had legislation almost ready to send to the congress, but we decided to study a little better because this service unlike for example lotteries, is a very competitive one. In some countries, such as Italy, there are more than 40 companies that exploit this type of electronic gaming service. And in Brazil it is not clear, for example, if there will be an auction or a license will be charged. An X number of companies that want to participate in the business, want to set up a betting site, would have to pay a certain percentage, a value to the government. And other considerations as well. In some countries there is a great fear, for example the case of the United States, that this activity influences the result of games. So the regulation has to be very careful, even before we will have to strengthen the state's ability to supervise this gaming activity in Brazil. Nowadays the State manages to supervise the lotteries because it is a well circumscribed game, it is a modality of circumscribed play. If Brazil wants to have sport betting, or want to have other games -everybody is talking about bingos and casinos- the state has to develop first a regulatory and monitoring capacity. Because today the number of people who supervise all lotteries in Brazil is less than 20 people.

Given what you are saying, is not risky to think about legalizing these bets?
That is why we asked to insure the bill that the government would send to us to study better before increasing the gaming market in Brazil; study how to strengthen the regulatory and state regulatory capacity. We need to have an independent agency to do this kind of work. Today the supervision of games in Brazil, say lotteries, is done by a department of the Ministry of Finance and, as I said, it is a very small department. Given this, the lottery market in Brazil is a very large space to grow. Brazil collects with all federal lotteries at around US$ 4.3 billion per year, and should be collecting close to US$ 24.5 billion. This means that, Mega-Sena and all those Caixa Econômica products along with the lottery being created, which will have an auction in a few months, the instant lottery has a very great growth potential. Today all the tax collection comes to the federal government, now, how is the division of that is something that depends on the congress.

About the legalization of online betting, do you have a study on the possible financial returns of these activity?
The return is uncertain, but it is an important product that is growing. In some countries like England and Italy this is very common and is a modality that will reach Brazil. This can give a recipe for some public functions like security, etc., this depends only on being regulated, legislated by the national congress. But, I emphasize again, today half of what Brazil sells in lottery, of those US$ 4.3b, half goes to pay tax to the government, for things like social security, the fund that is used to build prisons. There is nothing that prevents that in the current games, there is a modification in a portion of what today goes to various activities, public functions, go to national security. This is a legitimate and sovereign decision of the national congress. So, again, sports betting can turn out to be a very important gaming modality in Brazil, but now we already have a very important game modality that is the lotteries, all legal, in which there still is space to rethink the direction of what the government collects in tax on this activity.

Source: GMB / Jornal da CBN

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