Much is discussed today, more than ever in Brazil, the Sports Betting Law that was sanctioned in 2018, but has not been regulated until today.
We waited until the last minute of the term of office of the former President of the Republic, without Brazil reaching a definition for the year 2023. In other words, we continue without a regulation.
The Special Action Group for the Repression of Organized Crime of São Paulo (GAECO), together with the Public Ministry of Goiás, recently carried out the operation ‘Maximum Penalty’, which investigates possible manipulation of the result in the last round of Series B of the Brazilian Championship 2022.
The Column “Lei em Campo”, by UOL journalist Gabriel Coccetrone, once again brings up the discussion on integrity in Brazilian football, an issue of extreme national importance.
See the column in full.
Recently, the Public Ministry of Goiás (MPGO) together with GAECO carried out the ‘Maximum Penalty’ operation, which investigates possible manipulation of the result in the last round of Series B of the 2022 Brazilian Championship. The concern with integrity in the most popular sport in Brazil is growing and should receive even more attention in the youth categories, since we are talking about young people still in professional training. Given this scenario, what can the youth teams do to reduce the chance of this problem reaching these young people as much as possible?
For Udo Seckelmann, a lawyer specializing in sports law and sports betting, investing in education is the first step that sports entities must take to seek to maintain integrity. The first step to be adopted by any sporting entity to protect the integrity of the sport is investment in the education of its participants.
And education must start from your formation in the base categories. The vast majority of our athletes, amateurs and professionals, are unaware of the legal and regulatory rules on match-fixing, spot-fixing and betting in general. Educating them is essential to be aware of the consequences that their involvement in such a practice would bring not only to their careers (through sporting sanctions), but potentially to their freedom, since they can be criminally penalized”, he says.
Henrique Law, president of Ibrachina FC – a club founded in 2020 from a social project, which has been attracting attention in youth championships in São Paulo and has the ambition to be one of the greatest players in Brazil – says that the team passed on to the athletes the damage that this problem causes to the sports chain.
“As a training club, we understand that issues involving ethics are as much a part of athlete training as physical preparation. We recently held a lecture on the subject for our players at the Ibrachina Arena through the São Paulo Athletes Union. all categories, explained the damage that manipulation brings to the professional, the club and the sport. leader.
It is important to note that the Brazilian Code of Sports Justice (CBJD) provides for severe punishments for players who participate in match-fixing.
If it is proven that the athlete accepted to be bought he can, by article 243 of the sports legislation, be suspended in up to 720 days. And if he is a repeat offender, he can be punished with a ban and elimination from football. Lei em Campo addressed this issue last week.
Sports betting has a market that moves a lot of money. Some entities that act in the prevention of fraud estimate that the annual turnover of bookmakers is close to 1.5 trillion euros (R$ 8 trillion).
In Brazil, this market arrived in 2018, when the law that legalized sports betting in the country was sanctioned. The new legislation, however, has not yet been regulated.
