GMB - You participated in the public session
that took place in the Chamber of Deputies in December. From what you felt
during the meeting, do you think deputies will approve the gaming legalization?
Igor Federal - At
that December session the forces were somewhat balanced, the people favoring the
legalization of gaming and the opposites. But the point is that there are
forces today, both in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate, that are
favorable to gaming that has spoken and has made political moves in that
direction. But there are also opposing forces, as might be expected, like the
more conservative sectors of Brazilian society. Because of this we can not say
whether this will happen or that it will not happen.
What can be said, is that never in the last 40 years there has been such a favorable
picture as the present one. If you add the economic moment that Brazil lives,
with a more modern society, with less influence of religious issues, with the
gaming being legalized all over the world and people realizing that gaming is
not a bad activity as preached for the last fifty, sixty, seventy years in
Brazil. All this made a condition that we never had previously to legalize the
activity. I call this the best window of opportunity we've ever had. Now,
whether it will actually happen or not, it is a work that has to be politically
constructed throughout 2017.
In your speech at the public session you
said that such arguments as gamling adiction and and money laundering are used
as a way to terrorize population. Do you think advocates of these ideas could
disrupt legalization?
When I used the term "terrorizing society" it is because they use
this argument without telling the population the whole truth. People talk about
money laundering in gaming as if in Brazil it does not exist, or if gambling was
needed to make money laundering easier. In fact, the legalization of gaming
will take away the need to "wash”, because it will take away about 20 billion a
year from illegality.
And similarly to ludopathy, they speak of it as if any human activity did not
have a percentage of compulsion generated by its use. There are people addicted
to gym, chocolate, people addicted to food and they are terrorizing the
population as if gambling was an evil greater than any other type of addiction,
and in fact is the opposite. They do not count the two sides of the coin for
society and end up creating a picture as if gambling is one of the only
activities that can generate compulsion. It is a way to terrorize, to frighten
the population and to make people dislike this activity. It is not they who
will be against it, they are the arguments of who is against.
At the Brazilian Gaming Congress in Sao
Paulo, you talked about how the work of disseminating the image of poker helped
it to grow in the country. How can this image work make a difference so that
the legalization of gaming is approved?
The great
truth is that people who are against gaming in Brazil are using the devices I
mentioned in the previous answer. They are bringing to the population a fear
generated by arguments such as money laundering and gaming addiction, which
will bring a market permeated by illegals. So there should be a campaign of
those who are in favor to spread the positive side to the population. The side
of entertainment, fun, job generation, tax collection, even the side of
fighting ludopathy and money laundering. That is, the market favorable to
gaming, the sector of the society favorable to gaming should organize and
create campaigns of enlightenment to the population not to let the reticent,
frightening, prejudiced message of those who oppose the activity stand out and
prevail. In poker, we were able to do that because poker fans are passionate
about the activity; And they went to social networks to spread this message. In
the gambling market there will not be people who go to the streets defending
it, so the industry is the one that has to organize itself and create a
positive campaign.
Even without a direct connection to gaming
legalization, do you believe that it can help poker gain more visibility and
also generate more business opportunities?
Actually, I'm not sure. Eventually, markets for other games and other
entertainment may even disrupt the growth and size of poker in Brazil. I'm not
sure, I'm saying that it's an uncertain variable. What is happening is that my
business group, which with poker today is the largest legal gaming group in the
country, intends to increase its platform of operation and operate new games.
So my strong support to the gaming legalization in Brazil is due to a
philosophical reason, because I am a libertarian, I think it is not the state's
job to tell a citizen if he should spend his money gambling or not.
And also, I’m an interested part, as I see my group playing new games in the
future; with bingo and all other type of games that may be legalized in Brazil.
It is important to say that, for me, things are not directly linked, they are
independent things. The lawfulness of poker and the operation of my group, in
poker, is already something consolidated in Brazil. And regardless of whether
this is going to do well or hurt my poker performance, we intend to increase
our performance with new games.
Recently, in the United States, there
was a challenge where professional poker players were defeated by an artificial
intelligence system. How did this impact on the world of poker and what effect
did it bring to the image of the sport?
This was absolutely natural and the effect was extremely positive because
the computer had already won the chess world champion, the world checkers
champion, the GO world champion and now won the world poker champion; Which
shows very clearly that poker is a sport of intelligence, is an intellectual
activity. So in a bingo card or a roulette game the computer can not do much,
luck will prevail. Only in sports of skill, in activities of intellect is the
computer able to supplant human intelligence. And it did in poker, just like it
did in chess, checkers and GO. So, for us it was very natural and reinforces
our thesis.
Is there any CBTH project to increase
the number of poker clubs in Brazil so that the fans can practice more the
sport? What is the main difficulty?
In fact, a CBTH project for the dissemination and diffusion of poker clubs
in Brazil is already under way. To get an idea, below me my position of
president of the confederation, there are 22 presidents of state federations
and below those presidents there are now 500 clubs. So, poker is already
widespread. Of course the main difficulty is a specific rule. One thing is if
you are legal, and other if you are illegal; and poker has already won the
right to existence and its legality through a well-established jurisprudence.
So today, after the fight over the legality of poker in the last ten years, the
big challenge of poker now is to have a clear rule for its activity in order to
generate legal certainty to attract bigger investments for the segment and
consequently to expand the base of the number of clubs and players.
Do you think that poker in Brazil is
going to become a sport of reference, with popular idols and bigger events with
more repercussion?
I believe that more than poker is about to become, I think poker is already
in the process. it Poker is already a sport with a high number of fans, as it
has about 7 million players in the country. And these figures are reliable
because are given by the sites that operate in Brazil. Poker already has idols.
World Champion players go out in the street and sign autographs, are real idols
of this activity in the country. Of course they are not mass, but within a
large community today they are absolutely relevant and behavioral influencers
in Brazilian society. In the same way, the Brazilian Championship, the BSOP,
last year distributed 42 million in prizes, and the Brazilian Soccer
Championship distributed 30 million. The BSOP is already the second largest
tournament in the world just behind the world championship, the World Series of
Poker. If you take into account that the world championship should be "hor
concur” (out of competition), the BSOP is the largest world championship that
is not the world championship. It already attracts great sportsmen, television
celebrities, singers. Poker has already been proving its size, its strength and
its growth in Brazil. I think it's now a matter of consolidating all this in
the next years.
Source: GMB Exclusive
Author: Pedro Henrique Feitosa
