Senator Jorge Kajuru (PSB-GO) will be the chairman of the Joint Commission that will analyze the sports betting PM, which regulates the sector in Brazil (MP 1182/2023).
In an interview with TV Senado, he said that the text should be modified during its debate in Congress. Bookmakers will now pay an 18% tax.
In addition, the MP for sports betting also provides for measures to prevent manipulation of sports results and gambling addiction.
“First of all, it is necessary to stop with this nonsense that we are against the bookmakers. On the contrary, we want their legality and that they pay taxes”, declared the senator in an interview this Thursday, 9.
Kajuru pointed out that many businessmen in the sector are concerned about the license fee (R$ 30 million) imposed by the Ministry of Finance. “You have to separate the wheat from the chaff. I was approached by many businessmen who questioned that the license that Minister Haddad defined is a little disproportionate”.
“I talked to Minister Haddad to do it proportionally, according to the size of the house, because there are houses that cannot pay the amount and go illegally, leaving Brazil and taking gamblers abroad. This happened in Portugal, which wanted to face the houses in this way”, he added.
Joint Commission
“The text is good, something else will obviously be added, it will be amended. In this joint commission that I will chair, I want to hold a public hearing, I want to talk to bookmakers’ owners, hear both sides and be absolutely fair”.
According to Jorge Kajuru, the commission’s next step will be to choose the members and the rapporteur in the Chamber of Deputies.
“I believe that in the third week of August there will be the first meeting of the mixed committee. In September, we will have the position of the Chamber on the MP and the president will put it in the CCJ (Commission on Constitution, Justice and Citizenship) and in the plenary”.
Bookmakers advertising
Kajuru was also opposed to the proposal to veto advertising by companies in the sector on sports team uniforms and on TV channels.
“That doesn’t make sense. It’s not the TV stations’ fault, they live off advertising. How are you going to take advertising off TV? You’re going to take revenue from a TV station that is in difficulty. If that happens, it’s more unemployment in the middle,” he said.
The senator also defended the exposure on soccer club shirts. “We can discuss advertising hours, as happened with beer. If you remove advertising from the football team, it will harm the clubs. We cannot harm. You have to know how to see both sides and know how to leave in a way that suits everyone”, he added.
PM for sports betting, match fixing and resource allocation
The president of the mixed commission in Congress pondered that the sports betting PM needs adjustments because “not everything is wrong, not everything is right. Some details and some segments of the sport are missing for this 18% to be well distributed”.
In addition, Jorge Kajuru mentioned the need to curb the attempt to manipulate results in Brazilian sport.
“PM was improved, the minister was very polite, he listened to me at several points. But we can’t just deal with the issue of legality and tax, we have to really get into this wasp’s nest of earnings manipulation. We need to be punished,” he concluded.
Watch Senator Jorge Kajuru’s full interview:
