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Brazil’s Prizes and Betting Secretariat (SPA) has responded to a media firestorm around influencers promoting popular casino games such as Fortune Tiger through the publication of Ordinance SPA/MF 1.231, which addresses both responsible gaming and advertising in one.
“I’m sure that the SPA published the Ordinance to respond to recent press coverage, mainly from the Fortune Tiger (“jogo do tigrinho”) issue,” said Caio de Souza Loureiro from TozziniFreire law firm in Sao Paulo. “Since some malicious companies were using demo versions of Fortune Tiger and paying digital influencers to promote the illusion of profits, the SPA opted to publish the Ordinance with some specific rules for regulating advertising.”
The continual arrests of influencers who are alleged to have falsely advertised popular online casino games have been receiving significant column inches in the Brazilian press, focusing on the glamorous lifestyles they advertised and suggesting they enjoyed them as a result of gambling.
At the time, lawyers told Vixio GamblingCompliance that they were concerned the controversy could force the SPA’s hand into stricter regulations on advertising.
Those stricter regulations have not arrived, however. Most of the ordinance is in line with self-regulatory standards already put in place earlier this year by the Brazilian Advertising Self-Regulation Council (CONAR). Uniquely, most of Brazil’s advertising industries are self-governed by CONAR, which is a non-governmental organisation.
“The problems regarding Fortune Tiger were never due to the game itself,” said Udo Seckelmann of Bichara e Motta law firm, “but on how the advertising by the influencers was being done. As they were not following advertising and responsible gambling principles, some influencers engaged in misleading advertising, such as claiming that gambling is free of risk, that it can lead to financial success, promoting gambling as a financial investment or a solution to financial problems, and thus injured several Brazilian citizens.”
Under the new ordinance, licensed betting operators will now be held responsible for the promotional and marketing activities of the influencers they have contracted to advertise their games on social media. That means when a contracted influencer acts in violation of Brazilian regulations, the operator they are promoting will be in violation as well.
As of January 2025, unlicensed operators will not be allowed to advertise at all.
Speaking with Brazilian radio network CBN, SPA secretary Regis Dudena noted that the ordinance will allow the regulator to fully evaluate the status of influencers through its authority to review the contracts between operators and their affiliated marketing partners.
“An infraction made by their affiliates, that will fall upon the operator,” Dudena said. “And in the regulated environment, once this reaches a limit, the operator can even lose their licence.”
Elsewhere, the ordinance also clarifies the status of betting exchanges under Brazil's regulatory regime, which, according to Seckelmann, “was a big question mark”.
Brazil's underlying law for online gambling strictly authorises fixed-odds bets on sporting events and casino games, although the new ordinance makes clear that betting exchanges can still be offered under the framework.
According to Article 49 of the ordinance, “in the betting exchange offer, it is the responsibility of the betting operator to make bets available, carry out and settle them, crediting the prize amount to the winner's graphic account and debiting it from the loser's graphic account”.
