Federal Law No. 13,756, that was published in 2018, authorized the operation of fixed-odds betting on sport events, popularly known as sports betting. After 4 years of the publication of the law, there are just over 500 online bookmakers in operation in Brazil, which allow players to bet on the most diverse sports in different divisions - from the European Champions League to the Serie D of the Brazilian Championship.
The exponential growth of the sports betting market in Brazil generates a popular and common sense concern: Do bookmakers interfere and manipulate results of sports competitions to profit more from bettors?
In summary, match-fixing is an agreement between the interested party and a direct participant of the sporting event (players, coaches and referees, for example) to promote an irregular alteration of the result or the course of a sporting competition, with the objective of obtaining undue advantages for the interested party. Manipulations are necessarily conditioned to the behavior of a direct participant in the match or event, someone who can interfere with the outcome.
This questioning gains strength with the repeated and more constant news of results and atypical behavior in matches and championships, as well as unlikely results, the famous “zebras”. For example, there are cases of unexplained thrashing, grotesque errors that generate more corners or wings, unjustifiably provoked yellow or red cards and questionable interventions or omissions by the video referee.
The concern becomes even greater with the growing publicity of several bookmakers in championships, on television and even in direct sponsorship of sports clubs, especially football. As of August 2022, the 20 clubs in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A are sponsored by sports betting houses or platforms in various ways.
Although common sense and popular opinion attribute to betting houses and platforms the behavior of manipulating or interfering with the results of sports, these operators have nothing to do with events and are often even the victims of manipulation.
The operating model of betting houses and platforms is organized in such a way that they earn mostly from the operation of the bets, and not from the error of predicting the results by the bettor. Commonly, the value that the bettor loses when making a mistake in the prediction of a bet is used to pay the winning bettors, who have corrected the result of the match or an event within the game.
Betting odds (the multiplier paid to the bettor who hits the indicated prediction) are calculated from statistical analyses, participant data and determined variables, and Juice is incorporated into them, which corresponds to the amount destined for the bookmaker for its operation, its main form of invoicing.
This calculation is the materialization of the statistically most likely prediction of occurrence, considering the game conditions, clubs and athletes involved, adopting a deep data analysis for each calculated Odd, which is often even outsourced to large sports data compilers and processors. In other words, odds are based on the statistically most likely outcome for the event, not “zebras” or manipulations.
If we think of a commercial bias, and from the way in which betting houses and platforms operate, the manipulation of results is a very harmful event for operators.
First, in a currently very competitive market, players tend to look for more reliable and honest platforms, which promote betting with more fairness and integrity, which, consequently, is one of the main elements of customer loyalty in the Brazilian market.
Thus, the involvement of a betting house or platform in manipulation of sports results can mean a death sentence to the operator, who will lose all confidence he has acquired in the market. There are a series of norms and instruments in Brazil and in the international scenario that seek to mitigate the manipulation of results, being a situation of easy or medium verification. In addition to these instruments, manipulations become viral in a scenario of globalization – widely publicized in the media and social networks.
Also, these platforms promote the calculation of Odds in a very similar way and mathematically very consistent (just a simple comparison between Odds of the same game on platforms that constantly appear on television) - which do not include suspicious events, only recorded data from previous events and variables related to game dynamics. If Odd is very different from competitors, suspicions about the integrity of that bet or that operator are raised.
But, in general, a suspicious event or manipulation are not variables expected by betting houses or platforms, as they are not statistically verifiable or predictable. A manipulated result partially invalidates, or in its entirety, the analyzed statistics and the odds adopted by the operator and, commonly, generates losses to the operation itself, and not only to the bettors. Proportionally, it is as if a candidate cheated in a public contest, the result will harm the public agency and the other candidates.
Commonly, the corrupter in the manipulation of results is a big gambler - someone who has the economic power to intervene in the result and make an economically relevant bet, which makes him earn considerable value in the face of the criminal and administrative risks of the activity of corrupting a participant. As a result, the attribution of blaming to betting houses or platforms is nothing more than a myth, which blames the victim for an illicit he suffered.
Filipe Senna
Lawyer, specialist in Gaming Law, Master's in Gambling Regulation, Partner at Jantalia Advogados
