The Ministry of Sport and the Federal Police sign an agreement against match-fixing, filling the void left by the ban on betting.
The Ministry of Sport and the Federal Police signed a Technical Cooperation Agreement to strengthen sporting integrity in the country and combat match-fixing. The extract of the agreement PF/MESP nº 149029053/2026 was published in the Official Gazette of the Union this Wednesday (11). The document was signed on November 9 by the Minister of Sport, Paulo Henrique Perna Cordeiro, and the Director-General of the PF, Andrei Augusto Passos Rodrigues. The term of validity is 60 months from the date of signature.
According to the extract, the agreement aims to improve the mechanisms for preventing, identifying, communicating, and addressing match-fixing and other frauds that threaten the regularity, credibility, and unpredictability of sporting competitions. Each body acts within its legal competencies. The agreement is being processed under cases no. 71000.046614/2026-23 and 08200.022780/2026-41.
Within the Ministry of Sport, the area responsible for the coordination and integrity of the sector is the National Secretariat for Sports Betting and Economic Development of Sport (SNAEDE).
Agreement negotiated before the Provisional Measure
The agreement was negotiated before the enactment of Provisional Measure 1.394, which banned fixed-odds sports betting in Brazil. It was designed for a regulated market, with authorized operators, identified bettors, and traceable transactions. Now it has arrived in a scenario where this market has been pushed into illegality.
The result is a paradox. The State formalizes a structure to combat manipulation at the very moment it has lost one of its main sources of information. With licensed operators, monitoring the betting market was the first line of defense for sports integrity. This monitoring was the responsibility of specialized companies and entities that partnered with betting houses, including:
⇒ Sportradar
⇒ Genius Sports
⇒ Integrity Compliance 360 (360INC)
⇒ SIGA (Sports Integrity Global Alliance)
⇒ IBIA (International Betting Integrity Association)
These organizations detected unusual betting activity and issued alerts that fueled sports and police investigations. With the market operating underground, betting migrates to unlicensed websites, often hosted abroad, that do not share data with anyone. Therefore, the sector expects match-fixing to increase, precisely because of this lack of control.
Who loses with manipulation?
Match-fixing harms two parties simultaneously: the sport and the betting houses. The sport loses credibility, fans, and sponsors. Legitimate operators lose money due to fraudulent bets. Therefore, licensed betting houses had a direct interest in funding the monitoring. Without them, an ally that the State had for free disappears.
Cooperation between the Ministry of Sport and the Federal Police is welcome. But police investigative capacity does not replace the market intelligence that a regulated environment guarantees. In illegal gambling, sporting integrity goes undetected.
