Bets have until January 31st to start paying clubs, confederations and athletes for the use of their brands and names by betting and online gaming sites. The deadline is set out in Ordinance 1,092 of the Ministry of Finance, published on January 13, 2025.
However, game operators question this deadline. And they point out practical difficulties in starting payments until the end of the month.
According to José Francisco Manssur, partner at CSMV Advogados, since 2018, when fixed-odd sports betting began to proliferate in Brazil, Law No. 13,756/18 already provided for this transfer. However, to date, the amounts have not been paid due to lack of regulation.
“Law No. 14,790/23 reaffirmed the obligation of transfer. And what the ordinance established was that this consideration must begin to be paid by January 31st”, stated Manssur, who was in charge of drafting the rules for the sector of fixed odds betting in Brazil as a special advisor to the Executive Secretariat of the Ministry of Finance, in 2023.
“This initiative will address a situation that had been very unresolved for many years, in which clubs handed over their names, symbols and athletes themselves to be used by betting sites and received absolutely nothing in return,” he said.
The regulations provide that, after deducting prize payments to bettors, bets keep 88% of the amount collected. The other 12% is allocated to various areas, such as social security, education and sport.
Of this 12%, the percentage allocated to sport will be 36%, with the majority (7.3%) going to the entities that make up the National Sports System, which includes clubs, confederations and athletes. The law also provides 2.2% to the COB (Brazilian Olympic Committee), 1.3% to the CPB (Brazilian Paralympic Committee) and 0.7% to the CBC (Brazilian Club Committee).
According to Manssur, the distribution of values between each entity will be proportional to the volume of bets made involving certain confederations and/or athletes.
“The ordinance created by SPA/MF [Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas do Ministério da Fazenda] represents an important step towards the development of the sport. Sports betting generates billions of reais annually, and this allocation of resources will certainly open up new investment opportunities in the sector”, said Paulo Maciel, president of the CBC (Brazilian Club Committee).
The ordinance provides that bets have the possibility of creating a non-profit association that will be responsible for centralizing all payments and making transfers to entities.
“Today we have already verified this, for example, in relation to musical copyrights. Ecad [Escritório Central de Arrecadação e Distribuição] is a private association responsible for monitoring, collecting and distributing amounts related to copyright to authors. What the ordinance aims to encourage is the creation of a similar association to manage transfers from operators to clubs and athletes”, said Raphael Paçó Barbieri, partner at CCLA Advogados, who works with sports law.
Bets, not surprisingly, are reticent. Legal consultant for ANJL (National Association of Games and Lotteries), Bernardo Cavalcanti Freire defends an extension of the deadline imposed by the ordinance for the start of payments for the adjustment of bets.
“It will be necessary to create structural mechanisms by January 31st. It is unfeasible for operators, in addition to placing burdens on them. The deadline needs to be extended, this is essential. And there is also a vacuum, as there are competitions that have already started, like the state ones”, said Freire.
