Priscila Carvalho will be chairwoman at the talks that will take place on Monday, the 23rd, starting at 11am after the opening panel of the BgC. The participants are Witoldo Hendrich Junior, partner of Hendrich Advogados / Online IPS Brasil; Pierre Tounier, Director of Government Relations for The Remote Gambling Association; Jan Jones Blackhurst, Executive VP of Ceasars International; Olavo Sales da Silveira, President of ABRABINCS; among other important names that will be discussing good international regulatory and licensing practices that can be an example for the future Brazilian market.
GMB - What do you expect from BgC?
Priscila Carvalho - Events like BgC build important bases for the discussion of the potential Brazilian market and its regulation in a responsible way. In its fifth edition, the expectation is to deepen essential themes for the implementation in Brazil of the best, most modern and safest practices of exploration of the activity.
How was the fight to make poker known and respected in Brazil?
Making poker a well-known and respected sport in Brazil has depended on an intense effort to prove its legality and differentiation from other card games, removing the prejudice about its practice and bringing to various state agencies the necessary information to demonstrate that is an activity that develops intellectual, physical and emotional skills of the players, and that should be considered as a sport.
As an independent attorney and consultant to CBTH, I participated and watched all these years of battle for the (not just legal) awareness and recognition of poker as a sport of the mind. In these years we can highlight some important victories, such as the foundation of CBTH in 2009 and its registration in the Ministry of Sports in 2012, which represented the official recognition of the practice as a sport of the mind, in addition to the repeated and diverse judicial decisions that guaranteed the maintenance and the recognition of the legality of poker clubs and major tournaments held in the country. In this scenario, we present several national and international studies on poker - some of them commissioned by CBTH itself - that served as a basis for judicial recognition of its legality and exploration, already collecting a vast jurisprudential repertoire in favor of the sport.
Having overcome this commitment for the fight of the recognition of the poker as a legal sport practice, we have now consolidated this understanding and spread the modality throughout the country, which is demonstrated not only by the registry of the state federations of Texas Hold'em, contemplating the representation sports in 19 states and the Federal District, but above all by the dissemination of sports in television and editorial media, as well as in social networks and Internet channels.
Does society today view Texas Hold'em as a game that pays good prizes or a sport?
Nowadays the popularity of poker in Brazil is undeniable, which is justified by its exciting, democratic and inclusive character. Unlike other sports, players (both amateurs and professionals) do not rely on large structures for organizing matches or tournaments, as well as providing the chance for players of all levels to compete against each other in order to promote important social integration among the fans.
Thus, the recognition of poker as a sport does not exclude its practice in a recreational and social way, on the contrary: it is for the incentive to be able to practice it both among friends and among frequent competitors that its practitioners constantly seek improvement through classes, training , readings and discussions.
It took a long time for poker to achieve this recognition...
CBTH was incorporated in 2009 and since its inception it was the defense of the modality.
How could the activity show good examples at a congress like BgC so that government, parliamentarians, and society would see the gaming industry as a serious economic activity?
Currently, poker generates thousands of direct and indirect jobs, increases tourism in the cities where the main tournaments take place, as well as the movement generated by specialized media. The success of poker as a sporting and recreational practice, the seriousness of its confederations, the organization and credibility of the biggest tournaments and the economic movement generated by the modality exemplify the potential of the Brazilian market in the gaming industry, a fact that should serve as a parameter for regulation of the games of fortune as a whole in Brazil.
From your experience at CBTH, do you understand that the gaming industry as a whole is on the right path to gaining recognition that it is an activity like any other?
There is still great prejudice about the exploitation of games in Brazil, especially for moral, religious and some previous negative experiences that have involved some bingos in the past. However, at this moment, we see a much greater evolution in the understanding of this market and how especially this activity must be impeccably based on honest, unimpeded and safe practices for players, society and the State, which allied to control technologies and inspection offer a new reality for the development of this market.
This paradigm shift for the exploitation of games and successful international experiences has already reached civil society as a whole and there is a greater acceptance of the theme, which demonstrates that the other gaming modalities are on the right track to conquer the recognition and regulation of the activity.
Do you believe that the gaming industry will win regulation for all planned activities or only for casinos?
It is very complicated to make legislative predictions at this time. What we can say is that CBTH does not believe in segmentation by modalities so that regulation reaches only one and excludes others. The confrontation of the matter must be done in a coherent way on the set of games, since reservations can precisely foment illegal exploration and promote illegalities - which is effectively what one intends to combat with the regulation of the activity.
However, we have noticed some political tendencies in seeking to legalize only the casinos, justifying the difficulty of being thoroughly approached all types of games in a single legislation. This supposed limitation does not convince us. Here we are dealing with the thirty years of legislative debate on the subject, whose debate has been intensely nurtured by representatives of different modalities, who offer studies on international experiences, new mechanisms of control and supervision, etc. .
How can poker help leverage a gaming law fin Brazil?
To paraphrase the President of CBTH, Uetom Lima Gomes, "poker asks for little and has much to offer", since it has consolidated in a very active community. In one of the public hearings held last year in the Chamber of Deputies, the presence of CBTH, athletes and poker entrepreneurs guaranteed one of the highest audience ratings of the year to TV Câmara and was trend topic on Twitter. That is, there is a commotion and an intense participation in favor of poker, whether by mere spectators and supporters of the sport, passionate recreational players or athletes and celebrities adept at poker, which ends up providing a lot of support for regulatory approval of other types of games in Brazil.
Source: GMB Exclusive
