The head of the Secretariat of Awards and Betting stated that the country faces a very challenging regulatory agenda. Regarding the enforcement of the provisions of Law 14.790, he affirmed that they have the tools to combat illegal gambling.
Brazil.- Within the framework of the Third Summit of Sports Integrity, promoted by the International Institute of Governance and Risk (GovRisk), in collaboration with Genius Sports and Entain, at the Football Museum in Sao Paulo, Regis Dudena spoke about the future of the sports betting industry starting from the first of January next year. According to Law 14.790, which regulates the activity in the country, all operators have until the first day of 2025 to apply for their operating license. For this reason, Dudena, head of the Secretariat of Awards and Betting (SPA), referred to how the activity will be controlled once the stipulated deadline by the law is met.
Dudena began by listing all the regulatory advances that have been carried out since February of this year to create a modern regulatory framework suitable to international standards. Dudena stated that they worked on the most varied reforms, including very complex systemic issues to ensure that the systems are fair and adequate; the regulation of what are online gambling games and what can be done on a gaming platform; which entity or entities regulate payment methods, the fight against money laundering, and the internal procedures of the State in terms of online gambling; the monitoring of inspections; and responsible gaming and the rights and duties that pertain to it.
“What surprises me even today is that there is still a relative ignorance of the measures that were taken. Therefore, an initial duty at this time of the Secretariat of Awards and Betting of the Ministry of Finance is to make this report public, to give that public account that the regulation has already been done. There is a second recurring criticism and, in my uninformed opinion, that explains why we need a period of adaptation,” highlighted Dudena.
And he added: “We hear this provocation, because we are waiting for the adaptation of something that should have been done a long time ago, in 2018 and it was not done, but this market developed for six years without knowing what the rules are. We created many rules, complex rules, detailed rules that gave us a lot of work and that gave work to many of the people here so that we could come to a rule that protected the bettor, that protected the regulated market and these rules must be internalized by the market”.
According to him, the Brazilian State is giving authorization to the private agent to provide a public service afterwards and this process of evaluating companies of economic groups that want to provide that service in Brazil takes time. “In the process of authorization, each company has to provide us with around 100 documents. We have received, as everyone will have seen, 114 applications to date, 113 of which before the 20th, which was the deadline for the adaptation period. If we do a quick multiplication, we will exceed the 10 thousand documents that the team of the Secretariat of Awards and Betting has to analyze. So, the adjustment period is a fundamental period for that, so that we regulate,” he explained about the daily work of the SPA.
Regarding the inspection of regulated websites starting January 1, 2025, Dudena stated that he does not have a miraculous solution, but a series of actions that will be taken in order to achieve control of the market. “The first thing, to begin with, will be to clarify to people where they can and cannot bet. And, obviously, there is a convergence of interests among the regulators, in the dissemination of the message, for example, that betting on the site .bet.br is the only guarantee that you are betting on an authorized site and it is an initial starting point,” he suggested.
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Furthermore, he highlighted that one of the measures that the legislation allows the regulator to act through platforms, through social networks, is to prohibit the availability of links to illegal companies in Brazil. “We have already started conversations with social media platforms to ensure that links from illegal companies are banned in Brazil,” he said.
The secretary also reported that he had already spoken with a large and well-known search site about the possibility of banning links to unauthorized sites in search engines.
