Operators that did not make Brazil’s “whitelist” are not taking it quietly, and have either filed lawsuits to be included on the list or sought a state-level licence in order to remain in business at least through the end of this year.
There have been, according to reports from Brazilian newspaper of record Folha de S.Paulo, at least eight lawsuits filed against the Secretariat of Bets and Prizes (SPA) in the four weeks since a whitelist of licence applicants was announced and implemented.
On Tuesday (October 15), the SPA updated its whitelist to include five additional brands operated by two companies.
They included Esportes da Sorte, which the SPA said was added “due to a court order”. Reals Brasil, which operates the Reals and Netpix betting platforms, among others, is now also included on the list.
Another company challenging its omission from the whitelist is Zeroumbet Digital Platform, which is owned by disgraced influencer and lawyer Deolane Bezerra and is reportedly seeking approval for three of its brands. The operator claimed that it was being unduly punished for the highly publicised investigation into alleged money laundering by Deolane.
A further operator, Megapix.bet, has also received a preliminary injunction to enable it to remain active in Brazil through December 31, according to CNN Brasil.
The SPA’s whitelist comprises the 98 companies that have been given the okay to continue operating through the end of December while the regulator issues licences to operators. New regulations for unlicensed operators will then come into effect on January 1. All operators on the whitelist have applied for a federal licence to operate in Brazil.
Since October 10, Brazil’s telecommunications regulator Anatel has sent a list of some 2,040 unauthorised sites to internet service providers in the country, who are in the process of blocking them.
In addition to the anointed 98 companies, others have been approved to operate in Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Paraná or Maranhão through licences they had received from the states. On Tuesday, another eight operators were added to that state-level list, all of whom are licensed in the state of Paraíba but are yet to launch.
The Rio de Janeiro lottery authority’s offering of a local licence that it claims can be used to operate throughout Brazil is proving to be one of the more attractive alternatives for some operators.
After initially being denied a spot on the federal whitelist, Esportes da Sorte bought a company already licensed by Rio lottery LOTERJ to continue operating. At least three other non-whitelisted sites – VaideBet, BetPix365 and Via Bet – have also received Rio licences since the start of October.
LOTERJ has notoriously been at odds with the federal government, engaging in a legal back and forth over whether it has the authority to licence operators to accept players across Brazil and also to block operators who are not licensed within its territory.
According to Fernanda Meirelles, a lawyer with FAS Advogados in São Paulo, “some companies are now considering state licences, including the LOTERJ licence, because they’ve only recently realised the seriousness of the new regulations and the mandatory requirement to have a licence to operate legally in Brazil”.
More than 100 operators also have submitted applications for a federal licence since the government published its September 17 ordinance that served as a cutoff date for pending applicants to be included on the whitelist.
Meirelles cautioned that an application does not “guarantee that a company can continue operating while waiting for approval, at least according to what the regulations indicate".
“That said, many companies seem willing to take that risk, hoping that initiating the licensing process will give them some leeway to keep operating until their licence is formally issued,” he said.
Udo Seckelmann, a lawyer with Bichara e Motta in Rio de Janeiro, noted that LOTERJ does not currently have an open licensing window, after a most recent application period closed on September 20. Despite this, operators continue to announce their new licences from the Rio authority.
Documents from LOTERJ show that Via Bet’s application was discussed on September 27 and approved on October 11. VaideBet parent company BetPix, likewise, was discussed in August and approved the following month.
Seckelmann told Vixio GamblingCompliance it was possible that “some operators that are out of the SPA whitelist will partner up with LOTERJ licensees to maintain their websites unblocked during the adaptation period”.
“If LOTERJ’s authorisation window opens again in the near future, it is possible that some operators will apply for it.”