The Federal Police launches another operation. Named "Maximum Penalty", an allusion to one of the most important moments in football, it aims to investigate manipulations in the results of football matches, to enable success in sports betting.
Newspaper covers, photos, people arrested, seizures. A full plate for the less informed interlocutor to understand that: "I knew that these bookmakers were all bought. It is institutionalized fraud." In fact, this operation is already in its second phase.
In addition, news of a possible establishment of a "CPI of sports betting" print the main newspapers in the country.
It happens that memory often betrays the human being. It is easy to remember and perceive that long before the tsunami of bookmakers, duly formalized, there was already manipulation of results in Brazil.
Remember, for example, the famous case of the “Whistle Mafia”, white and black suitcases, the Sports Lottery Mafia, from 1982, reported by the magazine Placar, among countless other examples.
It falls to the ground, then, that bookmakers would be the biggest beneficiaries of this criminal scheme. The truth is that, as will be seen, they are the main victims of this whole scenario.
This text does not intend to approach all the nuances of this theme, completely, but only to bring a little clarity to the approaches that are taking place throughout the press.
The history of suspicious bets in the last year
It is known that for a modality to be considered a sport there is an unavoidable assumption of the indefiniteness of a pre-delimited result. If there is any element of imbalance in this equation, it ceases to be a sport.
It is the non-predictability that makes the sports market internationally relevant, moving a machine that involves several players and stakeholders.
Obviously, with the growth in the distribution of economic content aimed at sports; access to multi-platforms from anywhere in the world, with placing bets in a few seconds; the advent of a new possibility of financial gain, in a market that moves billions of reales annually; there are those who see the possibility of easy earnings and who want to subvert the competitive logic and uncertainty of competitions for their own benefit.
It's called match fixing, or 'combined results'.
Preserving the sporting logic and fairness of the bets is a huge job for all the players involved in this relationship, however, not a simple one. Imagine that, in Brazil alone, there are four main divisions of the official league of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), apart from all the state championships, which exceed hundreds, or thousands of matches.
How to control that all the agents involved in this immense structure do not 'corrupt' themselves and end up assisting in an obvious manipulation of the betting market? It really is a Herculean job.
On the subject, the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), which is a global association whose main function is to research and promote the integrity of regular sports betting, annually publishes its report on bets considered suspicious.
In the year 2022 alone, the report issued reported 268 (two hundred and sixty-eight) cases of betting under suspicion worldwide, a number that represents a growth of 14% in relation to the previous year.
To give you an idea, the same study expressly delimited that regular online sports betting operators lose something close to US$25 million a year, with said manipulations committed.
This, in itself, already demonstrates how harmful such behavior is for serious and regulated bookmakers, as the damages of said criminal conduct are millionaires.
And that has a reason to be. The fixing of odds (chance of a certain event happening, and how much the operator will pay the bettor if that event occurs) is calculated with the presumption that that event is really unpredictable.
If, within this context, unpredictability gives rise to a combination - without the knowledge of the bookmaker - that changes the nature of the sport itself, there is the injection of a large amount of money in manipulated bets, which changes the wager's remuneration, and, that event (now manipulated) occurring, after all, makes the bookmaker have to pay the bettor, criminal, the remuneration for the successful 'bet'.
Now, thinking about this in a specific case does not reflect the seriousness that sequential criminal acts can mean for the financial and business life of bookmakers.
For this reason, preventing, at all costs, that such manipulations occur is a priority for serious and regular bookmakers, at least those that we were able to assist and provide advice.
It needs to be clear: bookmakers are victims of this illicit behavior, and therefore work hand in hand with the authorities to prevent it from increasing or occurring in sequence.
What the draft of the decree and, now, the draft of the Provisional Measure (PM) for the regulation of sports betting said:
As is widely known, sports betting in Brazil, although allowed since 2018, has not yet been regulated to date.
The fact is that during the four possible years of regulation (2018-2022) a draft proposal for a decree - SEI/ME - 23554434 was presented, which would establish the regulatory rules for fixed odds betting.
In this proposal, the concern regarding control mechanisms for monitoring the manipulation of results and the health of sports betting was evident, bringing several obligations to the operator to subsidize the public power with information that allows to keep the market acting in a legal way. This was enshrined in Articles 7, 11, 12 and 13.
The fact is that, with the alteration of the federal government, there was a new proposal for regulation of the subject, this time through a Provisional Measure. There was a release, by the press, in the last days of the Draft Proposition of the MP through SEI/ME - 33914884.
This document also contains the concern with the integrity of sports betting (article 33-C and its paragraphs), mentioning that the operator has an obligation to adopt security and integrity mechanisms, as well as that the sporting events that are the object of the bets must have actions to mitigate match-fixing and corruption, in compliance with articles 41-C, D and E of Law 10,671/2003 (Statute for the Defense of Fans) and normative acts of the Ministry of Finance.
It appears that bookmakers, serious, regular and licensed, will have various obligations with the integrity of fixed odds bets and that, in fact, they are on the side of the Public Power and private sports entities in the search for the establishment of a market Cool.
But the reader may think: if the activity has not yet been regulated in Brazil and said impositions occur in the document that was not approved, bookmakers currently do nothing to curb such practices.
The truth is that this is not what happens in practice. Currently, in addition to all foreign regulation of the matter (which has legal implications and obligations, in this sense), bookmakers rely on independent companies that help in the search for suspicious bets.
Independent companies that assist in the supervision of sports betting
The fight for sports betting to respect the necessary fairness and avoid manipulation of results has moved the entire sector.
Companies that monitor the integrity of fixed-odds bets almost instantly began to gain notoriety. These companies, together with the operators, are like supports for the entire market, so that there can be more security and more seriousness in the scenario.
A current example of this, even reported by the media, is the fact that occurred at UFC Vegas 64, in which the fight between Darrick Minner and Shayilan Nuerdanbieke drew attention due to Minner's technical knockout in the first round.
Shortly before the fight, bookmakers saw an exponential increase in the amounts invested in the Chinese fighter, whose main event would be a knockout victory in the first round.
This fact caught the attention of one of these companies, which, shortly after the incident, opened an independent investigation into the matter.
At the same time, the president of the said company mentioned: "Our goal, as always, is to notify the industry of any potential nefarious, abnormal or suspicious activity as soon as possible so that they can act as quickly as possible. In this case, we hope that by submitting a few hours before the start of the fight, we may have helped to prevent some more suspicious bets from being approved."
It appears, therefore, that these companies help bookmakers, regulatory bodies and private regulatory entities to prevent manipulation in sports betting, as the interest is the legality of the sector.
One of these companies has even helped FIFA since 2017 to maintain "(...) a wide range of surveillance, training and intelligence services to further strengthen the integrity of football around the world."
However, even with all these control mechanisms, the reader may ask: How to control that athletes or people involved in sports do not manipulate the results of the sports they are involved in?
Can active soccer players be sponsored or place sports bets?
This question is very difficult to answer. This is because, although it is expressly forbidden for those involved in sports to place bets, such prohibition does not seem to affect them being ambassadors of bookmakers (which, in our view, can mean nothing but illicit, at least strange)
On the first point, it seems clear to us that all the regulations on the subject clearly bring the said prohibition, notably with regard to Brazilian football.
When analyzing the Code of Ethics of FIFA - International Football Federation, it is verified that article 276 expressly prohibits all those bound by that code from participating, directly or indirectly, in betting, games of chance, lotteries and activities or businesses similar in connection with football matches or competitions and/or any football-related activities.
The prohibition also extends to possible financial interests of these people, directly or indirectly (through or in conjunction with third parties - and here, eventually, companies in the sector enter) in activities such as betting, games of chance, lotteries or events or similar transactions in connection with football matches and competitions. Interests include obtaining any possible advantage for the persons bound by that Code and/or related parties.
This fact means, for example, that a player pays another person he trusts to bet.
The CBF is also moving in the same direction, as can be seen from its General Regulation of Competitions - 20237. Article 65 reproduces the meaning of FIFA's provisions by prohibiting “athletes, coaches, members of technical committees, directors and members of the refereeing team and all those who, directly or indirectly, may exert influence on the outcome of the matches” of participating, directly or indirectly, in sports betting.
The Pelé law also states that the Brazilian legal system receives the international regulations of the sport, which expressly prohibit the participation of athletes in sports betting.
Therefore, as it turns out, it is clearly impossible for the figures of gambler and sportsman, or person involved with sport, to mix. One, because there is an effective presumption of partiality that would involve the conduct of the individual involved; two because, without the real possibility of this control, the integrity of the sport would be compromised.
It seems to us that, on the other hand, the existence of a famous athlete, active, as an ambassador for a bookmaker could suggest an inverse logic of possible manipulation for the contracting party, which, as seen, although not expressly prohibited, raises doubts about the morality of said conduct (since, if we are debating the integrity of the sport, the removal of the player, or involved in the betting sport, either as a bettor or as an ambassador, it is imperative) - however this would yield another text apart.
The conclusion that comes from all this is that any manipulation of sports betting brings with it several victims, one of the main ones being the bookmaker itself, unlike what many people and occasional commentators end up leaving aside in order to affect the entire multibillion market that is a world reality; and that, even though the activity has not yet been regulated, there are several players and regulations working intensely to curb said behavior.
Yohann Sade
Lawyer specialized in Administrative Law and Tax Law. He is CEO of the law firm Sade & Gritz. He has a strong presence for companies, political agents and in the gambling sector.
Source: Migalhas
