BRAZIL – Government changes sports betting regulation model
Third public consultation announced with concessions to benefit global operators
Brazil’s SECAP (Secretaria Nacional de Políticas Públicas, Planejamento, Energia e Loteria) – Public, Planning Energy and Lotteries Secretariat – will announce this week a new regulatory model for sports betting in Brazil with a significant major change. According to well-informed sources, the open authorization system, announced last year, is to become a concession scheme with a limited number of companies to operate sports betting business in the country.
Also, a third public consultation will be launched for both the market and experts to forward comments on the main issues related to the sports betting law. The measures taken by SECAP indicate that it is unlikely that regulations for sports betting in Brazil will be approved in March, which would move to process into the third quarter.
Brazil’s authorities understand that authorization of the current model under existing legislation would not advance the issue of penalties for transgressions if these could be applied to license holders, and for this reason the Secretariat decided to change the model where only a certain number of companies will be able to act legally in the market for the next 9 years.
The first number of licences proposed was 50 to 60 to companies that comply with the new guidelines to be announced at a later date. However, the final number would only be defined after study of the new public consultation to be launched later in the week.
The three main points in the SECAP public consultation are as follows:
1) Presentation of the “Concession in a competitive environment” as a means of acquiring the right to operate fixed-odds sports betting.
2) Submission of a proposal for a maximum number of companies that may operate in the country on a concession basis.
3) The text of the new draft decree, leaner and containing considerations and recommendations from the PGFN on legal compliance in relation to the document set out in the previous consultation.
As far as experts are concerned, the model change could radically complicate plans of many medium, small and local companies that had the door open to one of the most important economies in the world of sports betting. Now, global conglomerates have the advantage as their economic power gives them a better chance to get one of the coveted sports betting concessions in Brazil.
