Lack of regulation in the Bolsonaro government boosted the betting market, says secretary

The national secretary of Sports Betting and Economic Development of Sports, Giovanni Roccohe stated in an interview with the website Congress in Focus that the accelerated expansion of betting houses in Brazil is directly linked to the Jair Bolsonaro government’s delay in regulating the sector.

Rocco recalled that Law 13,756/2018 stipulated the need to create guidelines for operation and inspection within two years, from the sanction. Even with the extension of another two years, the period ended in December 2022.

He highlighted that the lack of supervision allowed operations to act “without discretion”, introducing online casino games and football betting in a non-transparent way.

“What happened in practice was that the previous government did not regulate betting in the correct period that we had (to regulate). The lack of regulation, omission and irresponsibility of not regulating caused bookmakers to work without supervision.”

The secretary highlighted that betting houses introduced online casinos on their platforms and sport remained a secondary role, with the availability of games such as “tigrinho”, “aviãozinho” and other online gambling games.

“(The bets) started to offer the Tigrinho game, the online casino and the Planezinho game on the platforms without any criteria. They used Brazilian sport, football, to enter people’s lives. They used this advertising mechanism to enter people’s lives and chaos became what it became.”

Currently, Rocco has been coordinating, since September, the Interministerial Working Group that seeks to create the National Policy to Combat Manipulation of Sports Results. He states that, to give credibility to regulation, it is essential to train state and federal police and structure information flows that allow fraud and match manipulations to be investigated.

Rocco also stressed that the legacy of the lack of regulation leaves today a scenario of challenges to reorganize the sector and guarantee transparent and safe operations. The secretary highlighted that the inspection standard, established by the Bets Law (14,790/2023), already assigns to the secretariat, linked to the Ministry of Finance, the role of establishing control ordinances on money laundering and betting flows.

Check out Secretary Giovanni Rocco’s interview with Congresso em Foco by clicking here: