The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) has welcomed the publication of Brazil’s latest legislative effort to safeguard its sporting integrity ahead of the market’s sports betting launch.
As the regional sports betting industry in Latin America continues to develop and grow, the sports scenes of various countries have been marred by corruption scandals.
These scandals could impact the development of an industry which many sports stakeholders are either already engaging with extensively, or are eagerly awaiting engaging with extensively.
Brazil in particular is a significant market. The country is poised to launch a nationwide betting market, set to be one of the largest in the world. This poses huge opportunities for its sporting sector when it comes to revenue generation.
However, Brazilian football has been marred by allegations of match-fixing. Specifically, John Textor, the owner of Serie A club Botafogo, claimed that the top flight had seen incidents of corruption, leading to referees calling for the top fight to be suspended.
Against this backdrop, the IBIA has welcomed the publication of Ordinance 827/2024, the country’s latest legislative effort to safeguard its sporting integrity.
Khalid Ali, CEO of IBIA, said: “The Ordinance’s stipulation that operators in Brazil must join an independent sports integrity monitoring body is helping to drive growth in IBIA’s membership and in our ability to monitor more betting transactions in Brazil’s regulated market.
“Our priorities are to further strengthen our monitoring and alert network and extend our information sharing agreements with partner organisations in Brazil and across the Latin American region.”
Under the latest ordinance, betting operators active in the Brazilian market will be required to join an independent integrity monitoring body. This fulfils a long-running ambition of Brazil’s legislators at a time of heightened scrutiny on betting’s relationship with sports worldwide.
Throughout the legislative process to legalise nationwide betting in Brazil, initiated by President Lula da Silva last year, the connection between sports and betting was understandably a significant talking point.
Marketing arrangements between bookmakers and clubs came very close to being shelved altogether. Clubs were able to breathe a sigh of relief when sponsorships were approved – these will likely prove a valuable revenue stream for clubs moving forward.
However, with this revenue comes the responsibility to protect customers, who bookmakers and clubs will have a duty to protect from harmful gambling; in addition to athletes, who will need to be educated and prevented from breaching league betting rules; and uphold integrity, ensuring that Brazil’s sports scene remains as transparent as possible.
Ali continued: “With legalisation comes renewed responsibility to protect the sports betting market, sports and consumers from match-fixing. Brazil has set a high bar on integrity, but there remains a lot of work to do in the wider LatAm region.
“Our focus must be on creating a robust sports betting integrity ecosystem across the whole LatAm marketplace. IBIA will therefore be working with its widening LatAm network to ramp-up monitoring and strengthen the collaboration between key stakeholders.”
