Online betting activity is becoming even more popular with the World Cup, according to companies in the sector. It so happens that the Brazilian market still needs regulation, which opens up space for opportunists and, mainly, for currency evasion. This is because the servers of these bookmakers are located in other countries where the practice is already regulated.
The President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro, could change this situation and take the segment out of ‘limbo’, but he has chosen to ignore the project to regulate this market. Sports betting, also known as fixed-odds betting, was released from law 13,756, in December 2018, still under the government of Michel Temer.
The law determined a period of two years, extendable for two more, for the activity to be regulated. This time limit ended last Monday, the 12th, leaving businessmen in the sector uneasy – the document on the regulation of the sector has been on Bolsonaro’s desk for months.
According to a source close to the current president, there is still a chance that Bolsonaro will dispatch the demand during the week. For the time being, the sector remains irregular “This is a public service. You cannot enter automatically. It lacks regulation”, he says, warning of the risk of judicialization of the subject. “There is a liability risk.”
Companies in the sports betting sector analyze legal measures
Lawyer Caio Loureiro, a partner at TozziniFreire Advogados, told Veja that numerous companies are already evaluating legal measures, however, the intention of the segment is to verify whether the elected government, of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will address the agenda.
“The most likely thing to happen now is an injunction, which is a specific action designed to protect someone who has a right guaranteed by the Constitution or by the Law and is unable to fully exercise that right due to government omission, which is what happens in this case. “, said.
“Some companies are already thinking about a legal measure if this situation lasts for a long time. It is possible that companies will accelerate an eventual judicial measure, but they must wait for a position from the new government regarding the decree or not.”
For André Gelfi, managing partner of Betsson Brasil, the Bolsonaro government is signing a “certificate of irresponsibility” by ignoring the matter. “It is an unusual question. It is a testament to irresponsibility. It is a presidential decree and a provisional measure to resolve all the penalties so that this collection becomes viable in Brazil, so that society has the due inspection controls and for this market to purify itself”, declared Veja. .
“Today, we have the serious operators, the not so serious ones and the bad guys, and they’re all mixed up. There is a developed market. We are not talking about creating something, but about formalizing and organizing an existing sector. The population is at the mercy of this unregulated activity”. The expectation is that the World Cup moves more than R$ 20 billion in bets in Brazil.
