The Ministry of Sports' report to the Supreme Court exposes what only the regulated market made possible.
The Ministry of Sport took to the Supreme Federal Court (STF), this Tuesday (3), a report on the fight against match-fixing since November 2024. Unintentionally, the report also became a defense of the regulated market. Real-time odds monitoring, integrity ordinances, cooperation with international entities and a national policy unprecedented in Latin America: all this only exists because the country regulated fixed-odds betting.
The presentation was given by the National Secretary of Sports Betting and Economic Development of Sport, Giovanni Rocco, the last speaker at the public hearing of Minister Luiz Fux. He represented the Minister of Sport, Paulo Henrique Cordeiro. The secretariat headed by Rocco itself was created during the regulatory process. "I've been involved in the creation of the secretariat from scratch, so it was very hard to build this regulation through sheer force of will," he said.
Achievements that depend on a regulated market.
According to BNLData, Rocco's report reveals a contradiction within the government itself. The documents that the Ministry of Sport presented to the Supreme Court are linked, one by one, to the existence of authorized operators:
⇒ Regulations regarding authorization approvals, integrity, permitted modalities, and website monitoring only make sense where there are licensed companies to whom the rules apply.
⇒ The odds monitoring carried out by IC360, Sportradar, IBIA and Genius Sports depends on identified operators, who are required to report unusual bets and cooperate with the authorities.
⇒ Monitoring websites that offer services outside the official list presupposes a clear boundary between what is legal and what is illegal.
⇒ Sports funding: Law 14.790/2023 allocates a portion of betting revenue to the sports sector.
With the provisional measure, that boundary disappears. The secretary himself pointed out the consequence: “Today, what we have in terms of illegal gambling, in a context where everything is now considered illegal, is all on social media. This crime happens there.”
Without authorized operators, betting on Brazilian competitions continues to exist, but it is now done on platforms based abroad or through clandestine channels. There are no integrity reports, odds alerts, or duty of cooperation. Rocco acknowledged this risk in his own speech, noting that a Brazilian competition can be the target of bets placed abroad and that match-fixing networks operate in several countries.
This is BNLData's interpretation: the integrity structure that the Ministry of Sport proudly presented to the Supreme Court was built upon the regulated market, and it is this market that Provisional Measure 1.394 eliminated.
