.svg)
Brazil’s new era of regulated online gambling began at the stroke of midnight on January 1, with 66 operators launching under new federal licences but most of them on a provisional basis due to delays in meeting certification requirements.
The official launch of the regulated market came just a few hours after the Secretariat for Prizes and Bets (SPA) published a series of ordinances to confirm Brazil’s first tranche of authorised operators for sports betting and online gaming.
A total of 14 operators, including Superbet, Betnacional and BetMGM, received permanent licences after meeting all regulatory requirements established under a series of SPA ordinances.
A further 52 operators have been authorised strictly on a provisional basis, including international giants Betano, bet365, Flutter’s Betfair, and Entain’s Sportingbet and Betboo.
Those 52 operators have all been deemed fully qualified, paid the upfront fee of R$30m (US$5m) and “merely are missing information or documents that are considered to be curable”, the SPA said.
In a statement announcing the market launch, the SPA said the 67 authorisations issued to 66 operators had yielded R$2.01bn or around US$325m in upfront fees and brought Brazil’s online betting market under state control for the first time.
“The country is taking a fundamental step towards confronting the potential problems associated with this industry,” added SPA chief Regis Dudena.
“We begin 2025 with clear and strict rules, as well as mechanisms to enforce compliance and ensure operators will be held accountable.”
Certification Challenges
The outstanding documents referenced by the SPA are understood to principally be technical compliance certifications issued by independent testing labs alongside, in certain cases, proof of legitimate sources of funds used to pay the R$30m licensing fee and meet other financial commitments.
Under the SPA’s provisional licensing ordinance, the 52 named operators now have 30 days to meet additional financial requirements beyond paying the upfront licensing fee and to demonstrate that they have established customer-support functions within Brazil.
They also have up to 60 days from January 1 to submit compliance certifications covering their systems, remote gaming servers and any third-party integrations.
Failure to meet that certification deadline will lead to operators having their provisional licences suspended for up to 90 days, before eventual cancellation if certificates still are outstanding after that period.
Brazil-specific certificates for online casino games offered by licensed operators are also due within 30 days of the January 1 market launch, but games can still be offered in the meantime provided they have previously been certified for other international jurisdictions by an approved testing body.
The concept of provisional licences for online betting was not explicitly contemplated by Brazilian law or regulations ahead of the December 31 ordinance, and they may not have been part of the SPA’s plan until late in the game when it became clear that a majority of approved operators paying the R$30m fee would otherwise not be able to meet a wide range of pre-launch requirements.
Any delay to the January 1 market launch date would also have been legally and politically problematic.
“As the final deadline approached, the SPA likely recognised the challenges posed by the short timeline and external obstacles beyond the control of applicants,” Fernanda Meirelles, a partner at FAS Advogados law firm in Sao Paulo, told Vixio GamblingCompliance.
“This pragmatic solution appears to aim at maintaining engagement from those companies still working to meet the requirements, while also ensuring that their efforts do not undermine those who managed to comply fully within the stipulated period.”
Esports Uncertainty
The New Year's Day launch of Brazil’s regulated market came almost exactly one year to the day that landmark legislation establishing a national licensing regime for online betting was signed into law, setting up a long and winding implementation process.
One of the final pieces in the regulatory jigsaw also came on December 31 through the publication of a Ministry of Sport ordinance to confirm the range of sports and sporting events that may be subject to fixed-odds betting in Brazil.
Ministry of Sport Ordinance no. 125 recognises an extensive list of traditional and popular sports, from soccer and tennis to wakeboarding and capoeira, but it may be problematic in at least one respect by limiting esports betting to “esports recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC)”.
IOC-hosted esports events have to date been restricted to virtual games based on traditional sports such as baseball and motor racing, although a somewhat broader range of esports contests were played at the 2022 Asian Games.
Obtaining greater clarity and flexibility around esports betting is now expected to be one item on the Brazilian industry’s initial lobbying agenda for 2025, with the Ministry of Sport confirming in a statement that it would “continually update” its list of permitted sports betting events and “evaluate the inclusion of new sports based on regulations and recognitions issued by official sports authorities”.
Stage Set For Rio Legal Showdown
As previously highlighted by Vixio, Brazil’s regulated market has launched against the backdrop of broader regulatory and legal uncertainty that includes a special Senate commission actively investigating the industry and a series of constitutional challenges filed against the December 2023 federal law to establish a licensing regime.
We start 2025 with clear and strict rules, as well as mechanisms to enforce compliance and ensure operators will be held accountable.
Now set to come into even sharper focus, however, is the jurisdictional conflict between the federal government and the state lottery of Rio de Janeiro over the permissible scope of state-level licences in Brazil.
Of the 24 operators that have been issued a state-level online betting licence in Rio, just one — Caesars — is among those that have obtained a federal authorisation, even though several at least applied for a national licence from the SPA.
Conspicuous by their absence from the SPA’s newly published list of national licensees are Rio-licensed operators Esportes da Sorte and Vaidebet, both of which were only added to an earlier SPA whitelist of national licence applicants as a result of successful court challenges.
Esportes da Sorte, in particular, has been one of the largest and most prominent online betting brands in Brazil’s unregulated market. But the company’s founders were recently implicated in a criminal investigation into alleged money laundering, amid widespread reports of their family connections to illegal “jogo do bicho” operations in the state of Pernambuco.
Pixbet, the primary sponsor of famed Rio football club Flamengo, is another high-profile absentee from the SPA’s initial list of approved national licensees.
Those three operators and others with state-level licences from Rio lottery Loterj are expected to continue operating throughout Brazil at least for the time being, on the basis that the terms of a 2023 Rio licensing decree expressly authorises them to do so, subject to certain conditions.
Brazil’s federal government has filed a legal challenge before the Supreme Court seeking an injunction to limit Rio-licensed operators to players located strictly within the state’s borders, with the matter high on the list of key regulatory issues awaiting resolution in 2025.
“Starting in January, I believe the regulator’s biggest challenge will be enforcing the new rules and, most importantly, imposing penalties on those operating outside of compliance,” Meirelles told Vixio.
“The issue of state licences, like those issued in Rio, is far from straightforward and will likely need resolution by the Supreme Federal Court. This jurisdictional conflict could escalate as some operators continue to operate nationally under state licences without securing federal authorisation.”
