Front Line Op-Ed: ‘Bets’, the Vulnerable, and the Temptation of Easy Politics

Nuno Perestrelo0

Launched on 4 June 2026 in Record, Portugal’s leading sports newspaper, SIGA’s weekly opinion column Linha da Frente (Front Line, in Portuguese) provides a dedicated platform to address issues at the heart of SIGA’s global agenda, including Sport Integrity, good governance, transparency, accountability, financial integrity, sports betting integrity, sustainability, youth development and protection, and the future of sport.

Click to read this week’s article in Portuguese.

Bets, the Vulnerable, and the Temptation of Easy Politics

By João Paulo Almeida
Co-Chair, SIGA Standing Committee on Sports Betting Integrity

Brazil has just banned bets (sports betting), only a few years after creating a regulated market for them, with licensed operators and dedicated oversight. The Provisional Measure of 25 September terminates existing licences and prohibits the operation, offering, and advertising of fixed-odds betting.
The government cites household indebtedness, and 71% of Brazilians support the ban. The harm is real, and protecting those most at risk is an obligation. But the measure comes just days before the presidential election, and it is precisely when a cause is popular, morally appealing, and involves vulnerable people that we should demand greater rigour, not less.
There is a familiar temptation in contemporary politics: take a real problem, identify an obvious culprit, and offer a simple solution. Bets are the culprit; prohibition is the solution.
In June, reviewing the first year of regulation, Carlos Renato Xavier, Undersecretary at the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting, described the model as successful and assured that the government would not retreat from regulation, but would intensify the fight against illegal operators. Three months later, it ended it. What changed? That was one of the central questions at the SIGA Ibero-American Sports Betting Integrity Forum, which I moderated on Tuesday in Lisbon, on the sidelines of the SBC Summit. And perhaps the most important question is not why Brazil imposed the ban, but what happens next. The problem does not disappear…
The indebted gambler, gambling addiction, and demand continue to exist after the legal platform has been shut down. And where there is demand, there is supply. In a regulated market, the State knows where the operator is, imposes rules, requires protection mechanisms, controls advertising, monitors transactions, and collects information. In an illegal market, it loses what it needs most: visibility.
The government’s response is a committee to combat illegal operations and the criminalisation of the activity. That is necessary, but not sufficient. By April, Brazil had already blocked more than 39,000 illegal domains. That is the scale of a market that lies outside the jurisdiction, protects no one, and shares data with no one.
This is critical to sport integrity. Combating competition manipulation requires monitoring and the sharing of information between operators, regulators, law enforcement, and sports organisations. Without a regulated market, that system loses one of its main sources of alerts. The phenomenon does not disappear. It becomes harder to see.
None of this is a defence of bets — that is, licensed betting operators. Many operators licensed in one country operate illegally in other jurisdictions, and those who license them cannot ignore that. What is at stake is regulation stringent enough not to confuse legalisation with permissiveness. Operators have responsibilities. Advertising requires limits, and the 79% of Brazilians calling for them are right to do so. The protection of minors and vulnerable gamblers cannot be a footnote. And sport cannot receive betting revenues without assuming proportionate responsibility for the integrity of competitions. Regulation does not mean letting operators do as they please.
But a State that abandons its own model must explain what failed, what alternatives it considered, and why prohibition will provide better protection. Announcing a ban is easy. Explaining how vulnerable gamblers will be protected, how the illegal market will be tackled, and how suspicious betting activity will be monitored is much harder. That is the difference between governing a problem and exploiting it politically. Vulnerable gamblers deserve protection, not instrumentalisation.
Banning the regulated market is a political decision. Solving the problem is another matter.

– THE END –

Previous Front Line articles

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SIGA is the world’s leading organisation for Sport Integrity. We are creating a whole new landscape for the sports industry by delivering independent global rating and certification for world Sport to ensure it is governed and operates under the highest integrity standards: The SIGA Universal Standards.

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