Brazil Cracks Down On Unlicensed Bookmakers’ Club Sponsorships

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.