At the request of José Francisco Manssur, special consultant to the Executive Secretariat of the Ministry of Finance, ABRADIE (Brazilian Association for the Preservation of Honesty in Sport) presented a demonstration of how Genius Sports’ integrity surveillance system identifies occurrences of match fixing .
With this purpose in mind, ABRADIE promoted a seminar in order to elucidate how this technology has helped renowned sports institutions, such as the Premier League, the DFB (German Football Association), the NFL and other organizations, in the fight against corruption in the betting sector.
In recent times, there has been a new scandal involving betting on Brazilian football, resulting in the outbreak of the Maximum Penalty Operation, which resulted in the arrest of three individuals suspected of participating in a match manipulation scheme with the aim of benefiting gamblers. The investigations were conducted by the Public Ministry of Goiás (MPGO) and also led to the opening of an inquiry by the Federal Police, in addition to the establishment of the CPI on Manipulation of Results, which is ongoing in the Chamber of Deputies.
“Based on the experience of leading sports leagues and federations around the world, our technology detects and analyzes incident match-fixing, but also supports sports organisations, bookmakers, law enforcement and government authorities to educate all stakeholders and create a joint task force that can proactively combat match-fixing in Brazil,” said Guilherme Buso, member of ABRADIE.
The presentation was not limited to just monitoring, as the association shared details on the solutions provided by Genius Sports, including the use of intelligence to identify trends and patterns related to corruption in the context of betting, as well as the online learning program implemented for the PGA Tour (Professional Golfers Association Tour).
“To deliver the Provisional Measure (MP) for sports betting in Brazil, the Ministry of Finance relied on the best practices of regulators around the world and identified betting monitoring measures and sports integrity as the basis of a well-regulated market”, said Mansur.
Sports betting has been allowed in Brazil since 2018
Brazil legalized sports betting in 2018, through the presidential sanction of law 13,756. However, the sector has not yet been regulated, that is, the rules that will govern the Brazilian market, including the definition of the tax rate for this activity, have not yet been established. The Provisional Measure is about to be elaborated and sent to the National Congress.
ABRADIE representatives also visited the Ministry of Sport, in Brasília (DF), with the objective of demonstrating and teaching how the monitoring system based on artificial intelligence for games works, as well as discussing the integrity measures that can help the sports organizations in preventing match-fixing during events.