After a year of developing legislation, Brazil stands on the brink of the opening of its new regulated sports betting and online gaming market.

Ahead of this seismic moment, Fernando Noodt was joined on iGaming Daily by Ricardo Assis, Editor of SBC Noticias Brasil, and SBC’s Relationship Manager for Brazil, Isadora Marcante, to reflect on the significant developments in the Brazilian market during 2024.

The law to establish the market was enacted by President Lula da Silva in December 2023 and Isadora reflected on the industry’s reaction to the news.

She said: “We were like, yay, finally next year we’re going to start the process of having a regulated market, which is what we did throughout the whole of 2024.

“The market was very happy but we were also very anxious as well because we didn’t know which law ordinances were going to be published. We didn’t know what to expect so January and February were two months where we were very happy, apprehensive, anxious and excited for what the year was going to bring us.”

Elsewhere in 2024, news broke in August that the Brazilian court planned to ban X, formerly Twitter, after the platform failed to meet a deadline imposed by the court to appoint a new legal representative in Brazi.

At the time, the decision caused division in Brazil and abroad as many, including X’s owner Elon Musk, called it a crackdown on free speech.

Looking back on the news, Isadora described the government’s push as a “political decision” due to X not complying with the Brazilian Supreme Court’s demand to block certain profiles that were against the government.

“[It was] insane because as far as we all know we are a democracy and you cannot ban people from having social media because they criticise what you are doing as a government,” said Isodora.

Luckily for X users, the platform was quickly reinstated in Brazil following the controversy.

New Years resolutions

With it being the start of the new year, the trio ended the podcast by discussing their resolutions and hopes for the industry in 2025.

Riccardo explained that he hopes that legislators stop “attacking the industry” with regulations that push players to the unregulated market such as the proposed ban on prop bets.

He said: These last few months have been crazy because they did a schedule that was good and then we got closer and closer to the regulation starting and they started to throw some things in that are going hurt the industry if they go through.

“I just hope they have more common sense in this regard because this is the start of the industry and if we start on the wrong foot, we;re going to end up killing it.”

To listen to this episode click here or search for ‘iGaming Daily’ wherever you listen to your podcasts.