Law 13756/18, which resulted from Provisional Measure (PM) No. 846/2018, promulgated on December 12, authorized the release of sports betting in Brazil. This new modality is denominated as "fixed-odds betting", in which, at the moment of the bet, it is defined how much the player can win, if he hit the result of that determined sporting event.
Before this legal advent, websites and bookies lived in a legal limbo, faced with the impossibility of direct action in the country, and operated in a cross-cutting manner, including sponsorship of events and sports entities.
In recent years, in order to promote the insertion in the national market, several companies used "sports prognostics" or "site of hunches" sites, in an attempt to participate as sponsors of events and avoid the prohibition by Conar (National Council Advertising Self-Regulation).
In the international market, mainly in Europe, most of the elite clubs are sponsored by sports betting houses and the existing legal regulation in these countries seeks to avoid manipulation of results. However, in Brazil, the sports betting houses were already functioning without any monitoring and regulation, which put at risk the smoothness of the results of the competitions.
With the approval of the new legislation, not only is the activity liberated in the country, but fixed percentages are also reserved for sports entities that assign the rights to use their brands broadly for the dissemination and execution of specific prognostic contests and / or disclosure and execution of Lotex and also of fixed bets, in accordance with articles 17, 20 and 30 of the new law.
The measure still lacks regulations of the Ministry of Finance for the communication, advertising and marketing actions of the fixed-odds lottery, according to article 33, but already clearly attributes the possibility of using the brands of football clubs in the bets, a fact that, consequently, will open the possibility of direct sponsorship of companies to the teams.
The term for regulation of the activity is two years from the publication, renewed for an equal period, if necessary. In this sense, the tendency is for the regulation to bring mechanisms of protection to the action of bookmakers to avoid sports fraud.
In Spain, the local football league itself has teams of specialists who make constant analyzes of database, social networks and forums of bettors to block actions that violate the sports ethic.
In this way, the progress brought by the new legislation and the subsequent definition of the direct sponsorship rule will allow the Brazilian football market to experience the financial boom that is seen in Europe, with a strong investment by sports betting companies in clubs and competitions, leading these entities to a financial level well above the current and strengthening the national league before other competitions on a global scale.
Ricardo Borges Maracajá is a lawyer, attorney general of the municipality of Santa Bárbara, and a specialist in sports law, tax law and biddings.
