Sports sponsorships consist of investments made by companies in athletes, associations, or sporting events, with the purpose of promoting their brand and reaching their target audience. The consideration for the amounts paid as sponsorship is reflected in the display of the brand in properties of the sponsored, such as exposure of the brand in uniform, on the backdrop of press conferences, caps, delegation buses, social networks, etc.
Such values correspond to one of the largest and most important sources of income for sports entities. Thus, the greater the financial support of the sponsors, the more the sponsor can access the items to leverage their performance, investing in improvements to increase their performance in competitions, making them more attractive.
Sport comprises an extremely lucrative market, with the visibility of companies that are allied with commercial partnerships with sports associations, athletes, federations, and competitions being notorious.
Throughout history, the first registered sponsorship in the world took place in 1973, with the Jägermeister brewery sponsoring its brand on the properties of the Eintracht Braunschweig.
In Brazil, the possibility of brand disclosure occurred, in the beginning, only in the area of the backs of uniforms, starting in 1982, after authorization by the National Sports Council. Soon after, the front area of the uniforms was also allowed.
Here, sponsorship quotas used to be dominated by financial institutions. With the departure of Caixa Econômica Federal as a master sponsor of the main clubs in Brazil in 2018, they were compelled to update their partnerships. At that moment, digital banks and betting sites came into play.
The practice and exploitation of games of chance was prohibited under the terms of Chapter VII, of the Criminal Misdemeanor Law (Law No. 3,688 / 41), in its Article 50. However, in December 2018, the Federal Government sanctioned Law No. 13,759, which, among other matters, authorizes the Ministry of Finance to provide for the exploitation of sports betting.
That rule created the fixed odds betting modality. However, the formats of licensing, operations, taxation of bets still need to be regulated. According to the legal order in force in Brazil, bets must be controlled and managed by Caixa Econômica Federal, and in the absence of specific regulations, it cannot maintain its headquarters in the country.
Based on Law No. 13,759 / 18, the licensing process for bets could be carried out by means of a Decree. The mentioned regulatory move would further attract investment from companies specializing in betting on Brazilian sport.
After the legalization of sports betting, online and physical, the Union tends to follow the path of complementing its regulation. Everything suggests that it is a reality that will grow over the years.
As stated, the amounts paid under the sponsorship item correspond to one of the most relevant sources of income for sports associations. To attract bettors, companies specializing in betting have associated themselves with football as a marketing strategy.
Surveys of audience measurement and sports marketing revealed that the sports betting market moves extremely high figures per year in Brazil. In recent years, there has been a significant volume of Brazilian gamblers, a fact that has triggered an alert to specialized foreign companies.
Even though sports betting is part of an old form of entertainment in the country, the display of betting sites on the uniforms of the great Brazilian teams was able to raise even more the figures that circulate in this sector.
The volume of Brazilian gamblers has long drawn attention in the international market. The numbers corroborate with the logic that the disclosure of the brand of sports betting companies in the Brazilian territory contributed to the expressive increase in the number of bettors.
In other countries, betting sites have appeared on the jerseys of the clubs with the highest revenues in the world. As an example, many Premier League clubs, a reference in the organization and profitability of their competitions, have joined the betting business to make their technical staff even better, increasing the attractiveness of the championship as a whole. Some examples are Burnley, Crystal Palace, Everton, Newcastle, Norwich, Watford, West Ham and Wolverhampton.
In Brazil and worldwide everyone wins in this move.
With the contribution of the aforementioned sponsorship, sports entities are valued and prosper, enhancing the quality of competitions; betting platforms end up with progressive growth and consequent revenue; the public gains yet another new form of entertainment.
Each of the existing sports modalities generates a universe of possibilities for betting. The sport gains a great ally, since the lover of the sport attracts the gambler, a branch that only needs a more perfected and careful public regulation.
Rafael Teixeira Ramos
Professor of Law at UNICHRISTUS; professor of Law at Faculdade Luciano Feijão (FLF); doctoral student in Business Law, master in Labor Law, postgraduate in Labor Law and postgraduate in Sports Law, all from the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra; Chair holder no. 48 of the National Academy of Sports Law (ANDD). He writes in Lei em Campo in the column "Tribute to Álvaro Melo Filho".
