The man most responsible for leading the legalization of online betting and gaming in Brazil, José Manssur, told a conference of the first SBC Summit Rio to “Trust in the Brazilian market,” Yogonet reported March 8.
The conference in Rio de Janeiro’s Windsor Convention percent Expo Center where the former advisor of the Brazilian Ministry of Finance was speaking ended March 7.
“Trust the market,” said Manssur, who left the government last month, “because there is no reason to lose the momentum of that moment when we managed to regulate it.”
In an interview conducted by Yogonet during the conference, Manssur asked what was the biggest difficulty he ran into when regulating the new sector?
He replied: “I think the greatest difficulty was to regain the confidence of the sector, which had all the reasons in the world to believe that nothing was going to be done because nothing had been done before. When we went to the meetings, there was an atmosphere of great distrust between the sector and the public agency, and between the public agency and the sector.”
He continued, “Over time, we have been breaking it. The sector showed that it is structured with companies that comply, with companies that even bring practices from outside Brazil, and the public power showed every day that we intended to do it [regulation].
He also talked about the government’s reported concern of a possible tax war between the states and federal government, since some states are creating their own regulatory structure and taxes.
“State gambling decisions are based on a Supreme Court ruling and this ruling, in my reading, is quite clear,” he said. “States have the right to have their lotteries, but they have to comply with federal rules. And the most important federal standard is that the state must respect territoriality.”
Which means that the player will only be able to access a state-authorized website if he is physically in the state.
