Football game day is a must for most Brazilians. TV on, beer, heart team shirt and cell phone nearby. That’s because one in four soccer fans are part of the group of those who place bets in the country, according to Portal Uol.
In the beginning, many gamblers made their predictions about computers. With the advance of the internet and cell phones, this habit has changed. According to a study by the Casa de Apostas, sponsor of Bahia, Botafogo, Santos and Vitória, 95% of Brazilian gamblers already prefer to do everything on their smartphones.
According to an evaluation by SEMrush, the Latin American market was included in an analysis in August last year, pointing to an estimate that, due to the traffic of the month evaluated, the number of Internet gamblers exceeds the 30 million mark in Brazil alone.
The Latin American market was included in SEMrush’s assessment. On the national scene, Bet365 is in the lead with 94,845,151 users, an increase of 12% since July. The Jogodobicho website has 45,769,926, a considerable reduction of 43% compared to the milestone of 81.2 million in July.
Sportingbet.com took third place with 11.71, surpassing freebitco.in, which registered a 45% decrease to 6.4 million users. The platform deunopostehoje.com took the sixth position with 2,817,553 visits.
Brazilians prefer to bet by cell phone
“It has become almost a worldwide practice, people fiddling with the mobile device while watching television. Social networks obviously take up most of this time, but the consumption of sports betting has also increased because of that,” said Hans Schleier, marketing director Casa de Apostas, in an interview with Portal Uol.
Schleier continued: “When watching football matches or any other sport, we bring together the main habits of the Brazilian: entertainment, the second screen, which is the mobile device, interactivity and emotion. One thing is linked to another”.
According to a study by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation of São Paulo (FGV-SP), Brazil has two mobile devices per person. Among the devices, the use of cell phones is in the lead, according to the survey, there are 230 million active cell phones in the country. A 10 million increase in the number of handsets working compared to 2018.
“The practice of betting has become easy and feasible, just a click away. In the past, people were more prejudiced and found it difficult to navigate through these portals. Today, just two taps are enough for you to have the experience of watching a game and betting simultaneously”, completed Hans.
Regulation of sports betting in Brazil
In the country, approximately 450 bookmakers from abroad operate without paying any fee. In order to try to reverse this situation, in December 2018, then President Michel Temer signed Law 13.756 / 2018, giving authorization to the Ministry of Finance to establish rules to license the practice of fixed-rate sports betting in the national territory.
According to the Federal Government portal, the activity is configured as an exclusive public service of the Union, with commercial exploitation taking place across the country, in any commercial distribution channel, physical or virtual. The forecast was for the regulation to come out until 2019, but it was postponed until 2020. Now, the perspective until July.
One of the points that players in the betting market argue is that, when regulation occurs, it needs to be similar to that of consolidated markets like the United Kingdom and Denmark, which are examples in the calculation basis for tax collection and combating businesses that do not. obtained authorization to operate in the country.
In the view of sports law lawyer Eduardo Carlezzo, a specialist in this niche, regulation needs to be streamlined. “At some point, it is very likely that we will have all 20 Serie A clubs with some kind of commercial agreement with sports betting companies.”
Carlezzo concluded: “However, this market will really take off when companies are operating legally in the country, and for that the federal government has yet to open a process for granting licenses, which is extremely delayed.”
