Brazil’s betting industry has just received a massive warning signal. The recent court ruling, even if still in first instance, involving an important regulated operator carries enormous symbolic weight and should serve as a lesson to the entire sector. It exposes something the industry already knew but, by all indications, had not yet faced with the clarity required.
Part of the Judiciary is paying attention. The regulator is paying attention. Society is paying close attention. And Responsible Gaming has stopped being perfumery to become, once and for all, the industry’s maturity benchmark.
The question hanging in the air is simple and uncomfortable. Who will step to the front of the line? And here lies an unavoidable duality. Who will step to the front of the line of court rulings? And who will step to the front of the line of real Responsible Gaming, structured, predictive, and centered on understanding player behavior?
The case delivered a clear and documented message. There is no interpretation needed. It is written directly in the ruling. Law 14,790 already mandated that operators must “implement responsible gaming policies with effective tools to limit betting, identify patterns of compulsive behavior, and protect players at risk.” Ordinance MF 827 of 2024 reinforces this obligation by stating that platforms “must continuously monitor betting patterns” and “take preventive measures when signs of gambling disorder appear.”
It is impossible to treat this as optional. Impossible to claim ignorance. Impossible to do the bare minimum just to tick a regulatory box. It is impossible to end TV ads with “play responsibly” and believe that solves it. It is in the law. It is in the ordinance. It is in the ruling. And it is in the regulator’s own words. In a recent interview, SPA Secretary Régis Dudena was explicit in saying that monitoring is a direct obligation of operators and that the government expects effective, continuous, and preventive mechanisms to protect players.
And it was precisely this interpretation that grounded the court’s decision. The ruling highlights the existence of a “serious defect in the service provided by the defendant, consisting of the omission of the legal duty of monitoring and preventive intervention.” The problem was not the player betting. The problem was the platform failing to monitor and neglecting a responsibility imposed by law and regulation.
This should be a wake-up call for every operator that chose to operate legally in Brazil. The minimum is no longer enough. Operators must be ahead. Not tomorrow. Yesterday.
Every operator knows that user behavior does not fit inside a single platform. Players have multiple accounts, move between operators, respond to odds, balances, bonuses, and impulses. Risk emerges in the aggregate, not in the isolated slice of what happens inside a single environment. As long as each company looks only at its own backyard, often superficially, the entire industry remains exposed. The Judiciary has started to see this. And once the Judiciary sees it, it acts. And it acts hard.
This makes the question inevitable. Who will step to the front of the line of court rulings? Who will be the next headline? Who will carry the same narrative that now falls on this operator? What initiatives will be deployed to mitigate the risks that escalated sharply after this decision?
But there is another question, the strategic one. Who will step to the front of the line of real Responsible Gaming? Who will lead instead of react? Who will show that they understand the moment? Who will adopt predictive, independent, cross-operator models? Who will accept that protecting the player is not philanthropy? It is business protection. It is brand protection. It is cash flow protection. It is reputation protection. It is the protection of the industry’s very existence.
The sector can insist on the minimum and convince itself that compliance is being met. It can rely on timid policies and automatic banners that say nothing about real behavior. Or it can recognize that responsibility is not improvised. It is built. It is invested in. It is delivered. The market already has solutions designed for exactly this purpose. It is time to move out of inertia and practice Responsible Gaming. In capital letters. With R E S P O N S I B L E G A M I N G.
The industry is standing at a turning point. It will either join the right line or be dragged into the wrong one. Trust is lost only once. This case is not an isolated incident. It is the warning. The answer belongs to each operator. And to all of them at the same time. Those who do the right thing must also call out those who do not.
Thiago Iusim
He founded Betshield Responsible Gaming after more than 20 years working in highly regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals, tobacco, and alcohol. Betshield exists to protect the betting industry by protecting, through advanced algorithms and AI-based technology, the most valuable asset it has: the player.
Amilton Noble
Gaming and lottery specialist with more than 30 years of experience, responsible for creating multiple lottery, capitalization, and promotional products.
