15 years of Gambling Insider: The Brazil view
Over the years, I have had the pleasure of sharing my views with Gambling Insider on the development of the Brazilian legal framework for the gaming industry. For me, the publication is one of the most reputable media sources for the world’s gaming industry and has obtained exactly that position within the landscape over the past 15 years. Externally, at least, the key lies behind always providing insightful and pragmatic information on gaming markets worldwide, with contributions from the world’s leading professionals in the sector. After a number of recent contributions, I had the delightful opportunity to visit their HQ in Shoreditch, London and was impressed with the vibrant environment of this talented group of journalists and media specialists.
Next year, I will have been a lawyer for 30 years in Brazil. For 20 of those years, I’ve dedicated myself to the gaming industry. When it started, nobody was talking about gambling in Brazil. It was an area where there had been prohibition for nearly 60 years since the 1940s. There was a comeback at the beginning of the year 2000, when bingo was allowed for a very short spell, but as many bingo operators still say to this date: one day they went to sleep as entrepreneurs and woke up as criminals once games of chance became outlawed.
Really, it was only in 2018 that sports betting was legalised as a form of lottery – but different to the rest of the world where sports betting is not a form of lottery, in Brazil, to get it legalised it had to be made into a form of lottery and this 2018 law said it had to be regulated within four years. Those were the years of the Bolsonaro administration. At that time, as a lawyer, I was consulting more on regulatory developments and legal developments. It was very much this way for the 10 years prior, too. There was no real licensing and no litigation.
When I started 20 years ago there were discussions that were more related to land-based casinos; it was common for Brazilian players to go overseas, play and become indebted. They thought in Brazil they would be safe; however, foreign land-based casinos managed to get the Supreme Court – which at the time was responsible for approving foreign judgments – to enforce convictions against those Brazilian players. Then came the 2018 law, followed by the 2023 law, which legalised gaming as well as a form of lottery – supplementing the 2018 law, and the type of work I started to do began to change. We took on the licensing process both at state and federal level and started helping clients to apply for the relevant licences and dealing with all the compliance issues.
That brings us up to 2025. Now, the day-to-day operations include not only regulatory, but also tax, employment, contracts, corporate. Of course, 20 years ago we didn’t have online. It was just land-based. The funny thing about Brazil is that, different to the rest of the world, we legalised online first, but land-based continues to be prohibited. Other countries, of course, are more traditional and started with land-based many years ago and then legalised online.
Broadly, we’ve already seen a monumental evolution worldwide
We also have seen something interesting in Brazil regarding the difference between games of chance and games of skill, which has changed over the years. There have been certain games which traditionally had been seen as games of chance, and therefore were historically prohibited within the criminal contravention law had.
Elsewhere, there has been a proliferation in games of skill such as poker, which is probably the best example – but more recently fantasy sports, as well. I do think the Brazilian market has become more mature over the years. However, it’s still a market where there are very few experienced gambling lawyers. In 2024, when widespread regulation was confirmed – there were many firms which claimed that they were specialists, but they quite honestly lacked the track record. There are very few who have been within the gambling space for a long time and have the track record. But this will definitely change soon – as we can see this will become a market that will generate a lot of work not only to in-house counsel, but also to external council.
Many Brazilian firms are now specialising and the Brazilian Bar Association, in many parts of Brazil such as São Paulo and the Brasilia Region, have their own gambling law committees within the the bar association. This, no doubt, will provide work opportunities to graduates who want to become lawyers and pass their bar exams. So there is now a totally new sector of the economy to to work in.
When it comes to gambling over the years, Brazil has been quite insular not only because of the lack of regulation, but also because of the sheer size of the nation’s market and the wider Brazilian population. Now, of course, it’s poised to become – if it isn’t already – the third-biggest market in the world, as well as one that is both highly attractive and collaborative within the global landscape. Its cataclysmic rise is representative of the wider explosion of the global gambling industry. Fifteen years ago, nobody would have guessed everything that lay ahead and, if it was an exciting time then, it’s certainly an exciting time now.
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