The result of the vote on the sports betting bill in the Senate causes concern in the sector due to the possible removal of players from the Brazilian regulated market. The exclusion of online gaming from the project, in the opinion of Andre Gelfi, president of the Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming (IBJR), is very bad for the development of the local market. “After this deliberation, the formalization of the market becomes difficult,” says Gelfi.
Respecting the result, he said that “voting is always voting and depends on mobilization. We had some apprehension and unfortunately the majority's decision was not to accept online gaming,” he attested.
?According to Gelfi, “we will have low channeling and the consequences of this will be a thriving informal market where externalities are difficult to combat. It has been proven that prohibition does not solve the problem, it leads to illegality.”
The president of IBJR recalled that “the market exists and is a reality. There was a lot of talk in the Senate session that the bill would make online gaming viable. Online gaming already exists and no one in the Senate was proposing anything new”, he said.
The objective was “to formalize the activity and reap the benefits and combat the harms. Unfortunately, the Senate took a step back and now we will see if the Chamber of Deputies, with due lucidity, returns to the Senate's original text,” concluded Gelfi.
Source: GMB Exclusive
