The debate began with María Noel Pais, NetBet's Acquisitions Manager in Brazil, presenting the work already done by the international sports betting company, the licenses it has and the willingness to invest in Brazil and help move the country's economy. She also spoke about the importance of lawmakers and operators being close in this time of drafting the regulations in the country. "We have good and bad examples in legislation that show that it is very important that who makes the legislation need to be in contact with the operators to understand which model is good for everyone involved in the activity," she said.
Ricardo Magri, Sportradar's Latin America Business Development Director, began by emphasizing that the law passed in December 2018 legalizing sports betting has cleared the options pallet for operators, who are still cautious, but this generate that Brazil receives a flood of sponsorship from sports bookmakers for clubs and finally having a similar model to the major European leagues.
Magri also commented on the legislative side stating that Brazil can take advantage of the experience of gaming service providers to know what has worked and failed in other places, and also protect public from illegal gambling.
"The main objective of a regulation is to absorb the illegal market. We need a legislation designed to absorb the clandestine side so that the brands and players to be attracted. Prices can not contain a goodwill that passes an excessive tax because there will be inverted the competitiveness of the betting company and illegal market will continue working. These are the elements that need to be present to make a successful legislation. And success means absorbing illegal gambling," he explained.
The first football club to be sponsored by a betting company in Brazil, in a partnership with NetBet itself, was Fortaleza E.C that was represented by its Commercial Manager, Victor Simpson. According to him, the exit of Caixa Econômica Federal as a sponsor generated a lot of difficulty for Brazilian teams and opened space for digital financial market companies and other activities that are being tested as partners. With regard to betting companies, Simpson's experience in other leagues, such as the Premier in UK, gave backing to the club's choice.
He said that shortly after the end of the Brazilian Serie B Championship, in which Fortaleza became champion, the club started planning, looking for operators in this market and in less than a month got the agreement with NetBet, which it could not have been a better choice.
"Today we could put NetBet as our biggest sponsor, and I'm not talking just about financially. But, NetBet is accustomed to sponsorship activations and this is something that Fortaleza has been doing very well in recent years. We are very fond of companies that want to work with activation because the online content generates emotion and excitement generates sales. When we can activate with the sponsor I am generating content that replicates throughout Brazil and, at the same time, many companies see what we do and also want to work with Fortaleza as well," said Simpson.
Turning to the regulatory issue, Witoldo Hendrich Júnior, Chief Legal Officer of Online IPS, highlighted the concern of the operators in defending their public from gambling addiction, that the lack of regulation still prevents the arrival of more operators and alerted about the danger of legalizing only sports betting in Brazil. According to the lawyer, competition with websites offering other gaming modalities out of the country may make the sports betting business impractical.
"The sports betting law will exclusively deal with companies based in Brazil in the near future. The problem is this: NetBet installs itself in Brazil and starts to operate. That is OK. The site that decided not to come to operate in Brazil, is operating out there with a .com domain; and this guy is offering to the Brazilian market, through a betting contract celebrated abroad, bingo, roulette, poker, black jack, all within his site. But, NetBet cannot offer any of this because our legislation is conditioned to sports betting. What does the outsider do? He channels from that profit he has with other activities to subsidize better odds than those of NetBet that is in Brazil; and the gambler does not have such loyalty. So when he sees that Brazil is paying R$ 2 to Flamengo and the foreigner is paying R$ 2.70, he goes to R$ 2.70 and in a short time this structured operation in Brazil is doomed to failure", he said.
Witoldo concluded by saying that the political pressure of the football market in favor of total legalization of the gaming sector is important to avoid this scenario and invited the participants to seek the deputies of their region to show the importance of the activity and its legalization. "What we need you to do is to knock the mayor's office, the state's federal deputy; all officials involved, because football has a brutal political force, and explain to them: 'It's wrong'. There's going to be a public hearing on the 22nd, on the Sports Committee, to discuss what I've explained, and we need everyone to be there. Because if we do not put pressure on those congressmen, there's going to be an incomplete regulation."
The issue of integrity in football was also a topic in the panel. Ricardo Magri explained the work done by the company with federations such as FIFA, Comembol, and in Brazil, with CBF and the Paulista Football Federation, where technology can identify combining unusual bets in games held somewhere in the world with actions of athletes, referees, among others, in the same games in which these unusual bets were noticed and, thus, warn the federations and prevent the manipulation of results.
According to him, this work helped to clear the image of the activity in the country, demonstrate the concern of the operators themselves with the problem, and approach operators of the federations resulting in the first sponsorships of betting houses in the competitions. "Those first events that had the true pioneering spirit of sponsorship, was the Bumbet brand in the Comembol’s Copa Sudamericana, Bodog in the Copa do Brasil, and the Paulista Federation with Bet90 two years ago. They were all intermediations that the federations have asked us to do since they understood that the market was healthy, positive and that they were mature to embrace companies to participate in the football business contributing something more legitimate than sponsorship."
Magri also stressed the importance of club awareness for monitoring the manipulation of results. He has reported cases in which the club president himself uses the institution to manipulate a score and defraud results thereby harming the competition where it was participating.
Concluding the debate Maria Noel Pais talked about the next steps of NetBet in Brazil, reporting some operation difficulties in the country, but, relying on a good regulation that will bring even more companies to act in Brazil.
"We've been thinking about continuing to partner with other clubs. In fact, I'm talking about partnerships because we're doing actions together with the clubs that we're sponsoring to add value to the fans, which in the end turns out to be more important than the sponsorship in the shirt. NetBet wants to continue investing. But investing in Brazil at this complicated time is yet another act of trust that shows that there are people who want the market to be regulated. There are many barriers, payment methods, trust in the website, and, in addition, that gambling sites have bad reputation. Despite all these cons, Brazil has a very big market, we want to be here and with the regulation more companies will want to be, too" Maria concluded.
Source: Exclusive GMB
