Brazil sets new technical rules for regulated sports betting launch

Brazil has promulgated new rules and requirements that apply to the sports betting industry ahead of its official launch in the country. Ordinance SPA/MF No. 722 was published in the State Gazette on Monday, May 6, and it went into detail outlining the specifics of the market and how it would operate.

The ordinance covers both technical and security specifications to ensure that operators and stakeholders meet certain requirements in full and run an offer that is compliant with the law. Brazilian lawmakers have taken many precautions to ensure that the rollout of sports gambling in the country would be done right.

One of the technical requirements obligates any stakeholder that runs a sports gambling business in Brazil to host all necessary data servers and systems within the country’s borders rather than rely on cloud systems elsewhere, although there are some exceptions qualified as "exceptional."

Should a data center be in a country that has a specific legal cooperation with Brazil, the servers may be located there. However, another challenge arises from the fact that the host country must also meet the General Data Protection Law voted by Brazil in 2018.

Another interesting matter that will give Brazil its unique twist when it comes to sports gambling is that operators would be obligated to register as "bet.br" when it comes to their website URLs. This is done both to help filter through rogue operators and to raise awareness for legitimate gambling companies.

Operators would also have to receive an independent verification of their betting operations, and similarly ensure that they are technically compliant with the market rules within a 90-day period of receiving a go-ahead to launch.

The Brazilian Ministry of Finance’s Prizes and Bets Secretariat, which is guiding the process of market launch and fulfilling the obligatory four steps outlined by the institution itself, now will move forward with other ordinances that will focus on anti-money laundering.

Two more ordinances will be coming in June and July, taking a look at how operators would be obtaining licenses to run sports betting, and also how responsible gambling and social responsibility will be upheld by individual market actors.

Brazil finally passed sports betting into law in December 2023, although the country had the paperwork ready for the past several years. Under the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the country has finally started working on implementing a legitimate sports betting framework, allowing international and local stakeholders to break ground in the country.

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