Brazil President Lula signs decree creating the Gambling Secretariat within the Ministry of Sports

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has signed a decree creating the National Secretariat of Sports Betting and Economic Development of Sports. The new structure will be subordinated to the Ministry of Sports, headed by André Fufuca (PP).

Published last Friday, July 12, in the Federal Official Gazette, Decree 12.110 establishes that the secretariat will have the following directorates:

• Directorate of Promotion, Entrepreneurship and Digital Economy of Sport;
• Directorate of e-Sport;
• Directorate for the Monitoring and Evaluation of Sports Betting; and
• Directorate of Sports Betting Integrity.

The creation of the secretariat had already been announced by Fufuca at the end of June.

"We will have the Sports Betting Secretariat. It is a secretariat that is being reorganized by the Civil House. Among the actions and attributions of this secretariat, we will have the issue of sports integrity. The integrity that, in addition to accompanying the whole sports issue, [will] also accompany betting,” the minister said at the time.

Currently, there is already a Prizes and Betting Secretariat (SPA) within the Ministry of Finance, headed by Regis Dudena. 

However, the new department of the Ministry of Sports will focus more on the issue of integrity, as the text of the decree points out. Among the functions of the secretariat are: 

• Plan, coordinate, and execute partnerships with public and private, national, and international bodies and entities to maintain the integrity of sports betting, and to detect, combat, and prevent the manipulation of sports events and results.
• To act in partnership with other federal, state, federal district, and municipal public administration bodies to prevent and combat the manipulation of sports betting, within the scope of the Secretariat's competencies.
• To notify the Secretary of Prizes and Bets of the Ministry of Finance of any indication of facts that compromise the integrity and unpredictability of sports events and results, when they are subject to fixed odds betting.
• Supervise the analysis, related to sports policies, of the applications for authorization to commercially exploit the fixed odds betting lottery modality, for their approval, under the terms of the legislation in force.
• To define and keep updated and accessible to the public the list of sports and sports entities that may be subject to betting on events with a real sports theme referred to in Art. 3, caput, item I, of Law no. 14.790, of December 29, 2023.

The full text of decree 12.110 is available at this link.