UOL News Special: The mechanism of betting
There is a legal grey area in betting that fuels a mafia involved in match-fixing in football.
A 1941 decree states that promoting and engaging in gambling in Brazil is a criminal offense*. It is less serious than a crime, but it is still an offense. In 2015, a new version of the decree stipulated a fine of up to R$ 200 for those involved in online betting. In the strict letter of the law, betting on the outcome of sporting events is prohibited in Brazil.
In the real world, the story is different. According to a study by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, there are approximately 500 websites worldwide offering gambling for real money. Of these, about 10% have a Portuguese version, especially for the Brazilian audience.
Since most of these servers are located internationally, under the laws of countries like Malta, Gibraltar, and Costa Rica—all with more generous tax policies and where gambling is legal—Brazilians can gamble freely. In theory, although the bets originate from computers in Brazil, they are not placed within the country's territory.
This legal gray area generates approximately R$ 4 billion annually in bets in Brazil (according to market observers). On one hand, these sites cater to those who want to have fun while watching a match. On the other hand, they are targeted by a network that tries to make easy money by manipulating the results of real games. Below, UOL Esporte shows how this criminal mechanism works, jeopardizing the credibility of Brazilian football.
(*) Games of chance are those in which the player depends on luck to win, such as lotteries. In Brazil, the only legal lotteries are those promoted by Caixa Econômica Federal. The law also allows other types of betting, such as horse races at legalized racetracks.
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The Decree
Anyone found participating in the game, even via the internet or any other means of communication, as a bookmaker or bettor, is subject to a fine of R$ 2.000,00 to R$ 200.000,00. (Article 50 of the Law on Criminal Offenses. Text as amended by Law No. 13.155 of 2015)
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Clubs that delay salary payments are preferred by manipulators.
Hours before taking the field against Londrina, the Rio Branco players decided not to travel to the match venue, valid for the main division of the Paraná State Championship. The reason? With a payroll of around R$ 80, the club had two months of unpaid salaries. The match ended up taking place and Rio Branco lost 4-1. Later, full-back Thiaguinho admitted that he had been approached by a gambler who offered R$ 5 to players who agreed to throw the game. The match is under suspicion of manipulation.
Smaller clubs struggling with financial problems are the preferred target of the betting mafia. “Lack of payment, lack of food, players being sidelined… The club directors leave it in the hands of a supposed investor, and all these things happen,” reports Mauro Costa, from the São Paulo Professional Athletes Union. Costa is responsible for the area of prevention and investigation of match-fixing at the union, and is part of a pool between Interpol, FIFA, and FIFPro, the international players' union.
Although it's possible to bet on virtually any sporting event in the world, fraud rings focus on less prominent championships, far from the eyes of the press and where athletes receive less money. The money involved in this market is extremely high: "Interpol considers this practice more complicated than that of drug traffickers, because the manipulation leaves the [player] at the mercy of these guys forever. Once you're in it, you can't get out. Once manipulated, you're done for," he comments.
Resisting is the hardest part, because when you put money on the table, any human being trembles.”
The São Paulo players' union received complaints about ten clubs with delayed salaries during the 2018 São Paulo State Championship alone. The championships most frequently denounced by players for match-fixing are in Paraná, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina, Bahia, and Rio Grande do Sul.
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Five matches under suspicion in São Paulo
The latest case of alleged match-fixing that made headlines in Brazilian football involves five matches of União Barbarense, a club from the interior of São Paulo that plays in the state's third division. Team officials filed a police report last Sunday (25) accusing eight players and a coach of accepting bribes in an online betting scheme – according to what was reported to the authorities, a single game, against Matonense, yielded R$ 40 thousand.
Claudemir Peixoto, the coach identified by the club as the mastermind of the scheme, denies the accusations. The eight players involved also deny them. União Barbarense says it possesses a recording proving the allegations and has contacted the São Paulo Football Federation to investigate along with the Public Prosecutor's Office and the police. The club, which was ultimately relegated, wants to request an injunction to avoid relegation. The players who claim innocence will be contacted by the players' union and also by the São Paulo federation to explain themselves.
Those who remained on the roster until the end of the A3 season were advised by the club's legal department to avoid public statements. The investigation is still in its initial phase. On the field, União Barbarense had four wins, five draws, and ten losses, culminating in a final 17th place finish.
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How they do it: listen to the audio on UOL.
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Caixa stopped offering bets on smaller teams.
In an attempt to avoid involvement in match-fixing, Caixa Econômica Federal internally determined that the Loteca – the sports lottery – schedule would no longer include games from youth championships or even secondary state championships, without the presence of major clubs or those not in decisive moments, such as the tournament final.
To replace those games, Caixa returned to using European championships. According to UOL Esporte, the bank was aware of the match-fixing allegations and feared being directly or indirectly involved in any scandal that might arise in those competitions. "If something happens in Europe, it's not our problem," said a source who asked not to be identified.
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Robots and humans join forces to combat fraud.
The Swiss company SportRadar was created to offer sports competition data to the world's leading betting sites. In an agreement with these sites, they also began collecting information about bets placed. This information allowed them to create an algorithm that, today, can monitor the behavior of online bettors.
It's possible to bet on almost anything. From the result to whether both teams will score, the score at halftime, the total number of goals, the score difference, or the number of corner kicks, for example. If a particular game receives an unusual surge in bets on any of these aspects, the virtual robots alert SportRadar, which then activates human observers to analyze the circumstances. If there are indications of attempted fraud, the company notifies the responsible authorities.
“Our monitoring system can detect unusual variations on betting sites,” said executive Ricardo NM. “We complement this alert with a human analysis of what happened on the ground. The robotic part alone is insufficient, just as the human part alone is not.”
Last Tuesday (27), the São Paulo federation, which created an integrity committee to analyze allegations of foul play, forwarded to the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Civil Police information on five matches of the São Paulo championship (Series A2 and A3) suspected of having been manipulated. Today, in addition to championships in São Paulo, SportRadar has partnerships with Conmebol, Fifa and two Colombian federations.
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Union gives lecture to players on how to resist temptation.
Since 2015, the São Paulo athletes' union has been promoting lectures to raise awareness among young athletes competing in lower divisions or categories about the dangers of involvement in match-fixing. The content has already been delivered to athletes from 80 clubs and is titled "Recognize, Resist, and Report".
The idea behind the lecture is for players to understand how to recognize a manipulator, the importance of saying no despite tempting financial offers, and how to file a complaint. A case registered in 2018 shows that players now have more resources for reporting: two boys from Estanciano, a club from Sergipe that competed in the São Paulo Junior Cup, recorded a conversation with two men who presented themselves as former soccer players and representatives of a Chinese betting group. The offer was R$ 2 for each athlete who agreed to "build" the outcome of a match.
The recording reached club officials, the press, groups of friends, and the São Paulo Football Federation. The content leaked, but those responsible for the offer were not arrested because they left the hotel in the city of Itapira in time.
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Does regulation combat or encourage crime?
Proponents of regulating gambling say that tax revenue from the sector could help create more efficient regulatory bodies to combat fraud. But opponents argue that legalizing gambling would increase the scope of organized crime.
Since the 90s, parliamentarians have been trying to pass bills to regulate gambling. In early March, one of the proposals, a bill by Senator Ciro Nogueira (PP-PI), was rejected by 13 of the 15 members of the Senate's Constitution and Justice Committee. Senator Eunício Oliveira (MDP-CE) has already expressed his opposition to bringing it to a vote in the plenary, which means that the issue is unlikely to return to the agenda in this legislature.
Even in an unregulated market, international betting companies are present in the daily lives of Brazilians. Their advertising investment is heavy and includes repetitive commercials during sports programming breaks. To avoid violating Brazilian laws, these companies resort to curious tactics: the word "bet" is replaced with "guess," and the websites declare themselves to be for entertainment, not betting.
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Divergent views on legalization
"The only way to combat illegal gambling is with legal gambling. Game manipulation has been a reality in Brazil for a long time. The problem is pretending that this phenomenon doesn't exist. With regulated gambling, you can monitor betting patterns and check for signs of manipulation before it happens. This way, the people involved would be more afraid to manipulate because society will be watching."
Pedro Trengouse, lawyer and professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation.
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“Gambling never comes alone. It always comes accompanied by organized crime, corruption, money laundering, drugs, sexual exploitation, domestic violence, separations, debt, loan sharking, and the destruction of the personal lives of those who gamble. Gambling doesn't generate wealth; the money leaves one part of society and goes to another. People stop spending on movies, on restaurants, and spend it on gambling. Because of legislation prohibiting private campaign financing, regulation is a way for politicians to finance their campaigns.”
Paulo Fernando Melo, president of the Brazil Without Bad Luck movement.
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“There will always be attempts at fraud in sports, even in regulated markets. In unregulated markets, this is even more aggressive because you don't have legislation to curb it. If you do, it's easier to identify fraud attempts. When the red light goes on for websites, they block bets, suspend the game, and open an investigation. This only happens with this speed in markets that are legalized, as was recently seen in Portugal. We want gambling to come into the light in Brazil because sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Magno José, president of the Legal Gaming Institute
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Public Prosecutor's Office: Gambling and betting increase money laundering.
The Brazilian Federal Public Prosecutor's Office has taken a position against the regulation of betting and gambling in Brazil. In a technical note published at the end of last year, the Prosecutor's Office stated that legalizing gambling would serve the interests of criminals and increase the incidence of crime.
The prosecutors also said that the country is not equipped to monitor the activity and that Senator Ciro Nogueira's bill "does not create effective control mechanisms for money laundering and tax evasion. On the contrary, it creates new and powerful mechanisms for money laundering."
"The enormous number of bingo halls and casinos whose opening is encouraged by PLS 186/2014 is clearly out of step with the reality of national control bodies, even if these bodies were equipped with world-class oversight structures," said the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office.
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Legalized gambling is the norm worldwide. Manipulation is too.
Brazil has suffered from attempts to manipulate match results for decades. In 2005, the discovery of the "whistle mafia" scandal led to the annulment of eleven Brazilian Championship matches manipulated by referee Edilson Pereira da Silva to favor bettors. The games were rescheduled, and Corinthians ended up winning the championship after gaining points in games they had lost.
Countries where gambling is legalized also suffer. With a long history of legalizing this market, the US and European countries have mechanisms to curb match-fixing. It's not always enough: in 2013, for example, a scandal involved around 380 football matches across three continents. According to investigations, the masterminds of the scheme formed an Asian network of bettors.
In England, betting is deeply rooted in football culture, and it's not uncommon to find players and coaches who also gamble. The local federation's solution was to create a series of rules to limit this participation.
Legalized gambling is a common reality worldwide: a study by the Brazilian Legal Gambling Institute, which lobbies for regulation, concluded that, among the 193 UN member states, approximately 75% have legalized gambling. Brazil would be among the 24% that have not legalized it. ( UOL News Special – Sports – Adriano Wilkson, Gabriel Carneiro and Napoleão de Almeida From UOL, in São Paulo)
