The new National Secretariat for Sports Betting and Economic Development of Sports was created by Decree 12,110, which approved a new structure for the Ministry of Sports' staff. The area will have four divisions:
- Electronic sports
- Monitoring and evaluation of sports betting
- Integrity
- Entrepreneurship and the digital economy of sport
In the area of ??sports betting, the new Secretariat will be responsible for evaluating and approving license requests from iGaming operators after submitting the request to the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA) of the Ministry of Finance, in addition to coordinating actions to combat match manipulation.
To news outlet Empresa Brasil de Comunicações, the Minister of Sports, André Fufuca, reinforced what he had already said regarding the unit's duties, which will have as its main action the monitoring and inspection of everything that involves sporting issues linked to betting, including the combating manipulation and analysis of license requests made to the SPA.
Furthermore, the area will plan, coordinate and implement partnerships with public and private entities, nationally and abroad, to combat match-fixing in sports associated with sports betting.
“We are going to create a structure within the Ministry that will monitor and supervise the modality. To achieve this, we will work with the necessary integrity and transparency,” declared Fufuca.
The new secretariat of the Ministry of Sports will not have the final say regarding license requests from sports betting and online gaming operators, which will continue to be centralized in the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets, headed by Régis Dudena. But it will have to endorse the approval, otherwise it will be up to the Attorney General's Office to give the final vote on whether or not to approve an operator.
A board (Monitoring and Evaluation) of the new area will be responsible for analyzing the license requests presented to the SPA, granting approval – or not – to the authorization requests. It will also monitor all sporting competitions involving fixed odds betting.
Source: GMB
