Last week, Betway announced its withdrawal from Brazil just months before the opening of the country’s regulated online gaming market.

On the latest episode of iGaming Daily, Fernando Noodt, Senior Journalist for SBC Noticias, was joined by Ricardo Assis and Ana Maria Menezes from the SBC Noticias Brasil team, as well as SBC’s Relationship Manager for Brazil, Isadora Marcante, to discuss the exit.

Brazil is not the only country that Betway, and its owner Super Group, have exited in recent times.

Fernando explained: “Betway has definitely gone through a bumpy road during 2024 because Brazil is not the first market they’ve exited. Super Group announced in July that they would start their planned exit from the US sportsbook markets because they were not happy with the status quo.

“They also decided to end their Swedish operations from October so now Brazil makes it three markets, if you consider the US as one, but it’s actually more than that. Definitely a year of tough decisions for Betway and Super Group.”

Although the SBC Noticias team is “still in the dark as to why they have decided to do this” after not receiving any comments from Betway when requested, Isadora speculated that the move could be due to “legal uncertainty” in Brazil.

She said: “For a big company such as Betway to leave the market, it’s showing to the country that they don’t mind losing the amount of revenue they can make in a single year because they’re not sure if they want to be in the country and go through all these legal uncertainties that we’ve been facing. It gives us a message that Brazil is not doing well when it comes to regulating the market.

“I talk to operators and they all say the same thing, the government changes the rules as they like at the moment they want to, so companies don’t know what’s going to happen. You pay 30m BRL ($6m) just to get another law ordinance published changing your strategic plans, growth measures, and everything you want to do.

“If the government keeps changing the rules and not letting the big players in the market know what they can do, it’s really bad. We’re going to strangle and kill the market.”

During the episode, the four also discussed the proposed bans on certain types of betting and the future of land-based casinos in Brazil.