According to José Francisco Manssur, partner at CSMV Advogados, since 2018, when fixed-odds sports betting began to proliferate in Brazil, Law No. 13,756/18 has already provided for this transfer. However, to date, the amounts have not been paid due to a lack of regulation.
"Law No. 14,790/23 reaffirmed the obligation to transfer. And what the ordinance established was that this consideration must begin to be paid by January 31," said Manssur, who was in charge of drafting the rules for the fixed-odds betting sector in Brazil as a special advisor to the Executive Secretariat of the Ministry of Finance, in 2023.
"This initiative will remedy a situation that had been very poorly resolved for many years, in which clubs would hand over their names, symbols and athletes themselves to be used by betting sites and receive absolutely nothing in return," he said.
The regulation states that, after deducting the prize payments to bettors, bets keep 88% of the amount collected. The other 12% is allocated to various areas, such as social security, education and sports.
Of these 12%, 36% will be allocated to sports, with the majority (7.3%) going to the entities that form the National Sports System, which includes clubs, confederations and athletes. The law also provides for 2.2% to the COB (Brazilian Olympic Committee), 1.3% to the CPB (Brazilian Paralympic Committee) and 0.7% to the CBC (Brazilian Committee of Clubs).
According to Manssur, the distribution of the amounts among each entity will be proportional to the volume of bets made involving certain confederations and/or athletes.
"The ordinance created by the SPA/MF [Prizes and Betting Secretariat of the Ministry of Finance] represents an important step for the development of sports. Sports betting generates billions of reais annually, and this allocation of resources will certainly open up new investment opportunities in the sector," said Paulo Maciel, president of the CBC (Brazilian Committee of Clubs).
The ordinance provides that bets have the possibility of creating a non-profit association that will be responsible for centralizing all payments and making transfers to the entities.
"We have already seen this, for example, in relation to music copyrights. Ecad [Central Office for Collection and Distribution] is a private association responsible for monitoring, collecting and distributing amounts related to copyrights to authors. What the ordinance aims to encourage is the creation of a similar association to manage the transfers by operators to clubs and athletes," said Raphael Paçó Barbieri, partner at CCLA Advogados, who works with sports law.
Unsurprisingly, the betting companies are reluctant. Legal consultant for ANJL (National Association of Games and Lotteries), Bernardo Cavalcanti Freire, advocates extending the deadline imposed by the ordinance for the start of payments to adjust the ‘Bets’.
"It will be necessary to create structural mechanisms by January 31st. It is unfeasible for the operators, in addition to placing a burden on them. The deadline needs to be extended, this is essential. And there is also a gap, as there are competitions that have already started, such as the state championships," said Freire.
Source: UOL
