Globo, the Brazilian media giant, has called supervision to guarantee the fairness of sports betting “essential,” Games Magazine Brasil reported June 3.
In an editorial published June 2, Globo cited allegations of match fixing and other cases and declared, “Betting regulation was an advance, but fraud shows that the challenge is not limited to tax issues.”
Even before being legalized, Brazil’s sports betting market last year was R$ 100 billion (US$ 19 billion), including mainly illegal and untaxed bets.
While collecting tax revenue is important, a bigger concern to the industry and government is ensuring integrity throughout the industry.
When reformers, such as Globo write about this concern, they usually cite a match-fixing investigation of a game between Goiás and Goiânia that uncovered widespread fraud.
The editorial asserted that there must be guarantees that even minor championships be free of fraud. The paper added that artificial intelligence (AI) has created an additional challenge because bets can be personalized to suit individual tastes and predicted with extremely high accuracy, which creates an unfair advantage for those who can access such technology.
