The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) said it will enforce a ban on club sponsorship by bookmakers across all levels of Brazilian football starting last Friday (11 October).

Clubs and leagues have been instructed to end deals with operators lacking approval from the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA), following orders from the Ministry of Finance.

This move affects five Série A clubs, including Grêmio, Corinthians, Bahia, and Palmeiras, all of which are sponsored by Esportes da Sorte – the company challenging the SPA’s licensing process.

Athletico Paranaense has already suspended its sponsorship with the company, though other clubs maintain their partnerships.

The CBF’s decision aligns with Brazil’s broader effort to regulate betting through a new licensing regime, aimed at controlling the rapidly growing sports betting market in the country.

The SPA has issued 90 licenses but faced criticism from betting companies left out of the process, such as Esportes da Sorte, which only holds a state-level license from Rio de Janeiro, now invalid nationally due to a recent ruling.

Brazil has been plagued by allegations of betting related match-fixing with the unlicensed betting market impacting not only the sporting integrity of Brazilian football but also the country’s broader economic and legal framework.

However, betting sponsorships have quickly become a crucial revenue source for many clubs.

The lights-out approach adopted by Brazil’s regulators differs from that in Europe where regulators have generally given betting operators more time to comply with new regulations amid growing concerns of the need to increase consumer protections. In Brazil the issue has been that regulation has not been fast enough to keep up with the explosion of bookmakers in the market and the clubs’ financial ecosystems.

Genoa, Italy’s oldest club, are seeking new buyers after owners 777 Partners – who had tried to purchase Everton a few months ago – collapsed financially.

Reports claim all of the US-based investment firm’s football assets “have been put up for sale” after the High Court in London presented them with a winding up order.

The downfall of 777 Partners – whose portfolio of teams either under ownership or which they had stakes in included Genoa, Sevilla, Hertha Berlin, Vasco da Gama, Melbourne Victory and Standard Liege – comes some five months after the firm were handed a deadline of the end of May to complete the Everton deal, having initially been granted “conditional approval” by the English Premier League provided they met a number of conditions.

The Miami-based firm had been beset by legal and financial issues and was effectively being kept afloat by a $40 million loan taken by A-Cap in May, one of their principle creditors.

They had been in charge of Genoa since 2021. Belgium’s Standard Liege is also apparently up for sale at €15-18 million.

After a gap in which FIFA was left without a major partner in the esports arena following the licensing fallout with EA Sports over the EA Sports long-running FIFA series, the world governing body has agreed a collaboration with Konami Digital Entertainment Co.

Two editions of the FIFAe World Cup will be played on the Konami platform, utilising both mobile and gaming consoles.

EA Sports and its rebranded EA FC game runs its own global championships.

“We are incredibly excited to join forces with Konami. This collaboration aligns perfectly with our mission to promote football globally and to provide a platform for players to showcase their skills,” said Romy Gai, FIFA Chief Business Officer.

Qualifying for the FIFAe World Cup began yesterday. In the first year of the tournament, 18 nations have been invited with the participants selected on factors such as their player base and the previous performances of competitors from the respective countries.

Komani, senior executive officer Koji Kobayashi said: “At Konami we have continued to take on challenges in the development of football simulation and esports. We are very pleased to be able to contribute to the promotion of eFootball in a new dimension through this collaboration with FIFAe.”

Komani does have recent previous experience in this environment having hosted eFootball tournaments, most notably the Championship 2024 Club Event this year with European clubs, as well as the eJLeague in collaboration with the JLeague.

No value was given for the two-World Cup deal and Konami isn’t licensing the FIFA brand name for its game.

Since FIFA’s fallout with EA Sports (in 2020, $158.9 million of the governing body’s $266.5 million in total revenue for the year came from licensing rights, $100 million reckoned to be from EA Sports), FIFA has promised that it would be creating its own bigger and better video game with the belief that use of its FIFA name would blow allcomers – like EA FC and Konami – out the water.

It hasn’t so far and EA Sports and its new EA FC game have gone from strength to strength, proving that actually in the esports world, FIFA’s name doesn’t have a huge value, it is actually all about the game.

FIFA had wanted a significant increase on the reported $100 million a year EA was paying them for use of their name. EA took the view that they were overvaluing their license and FIFA brand name – it was their game and their ball and they took it away.

FIFA is now back in the esports game with a significant video gamemaker in Konami and with a branded FIFA efootball World Cup. But not yet with a branded efootball game that can compete with the efootball gold standard of EA FC, and unlikely anywhere near the $100 million per year they were receiving from EA.