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It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine because it's nearly the end of the year. I'm Fernando Nott, business journalist for SBC Noticias and your host for today's episode of iGaming Daily. And we are nearly in 2025 and I couldn't be happier this year is finally over because there's a lot that has been going this year. So it's fun to like get to the stage and recap. all about it. But there's still things going on this year, a lot going on, and that's why today we are gathered here to recap everything and to go through the latest news with an editor for SBC Noticias Brasil, Ricardo Aziz. Ricardo, how are you today? Hi Fer, I'm really well and you? Everything fine? Everything is just... Perfect. I actually really like the Christmas time so I'm in a very good mood as well as is for what I see Isadora Marcanchi, Relationships Manager, Brazil. How are you Isadora? I'm very good, fair. How are you? I'm really happy to be with Ricardo and Ana once again. And yeah, I'm ready for Christmas. I cannot wait. I've been ready since October. I'm too excited. yeah we can see we can see your Christmas tree behind you for those that can't see it and are listening to us. Isa has her Christmas tree behind her so yeah we get the Christmas vibe and you mentioned Ana so you kind of spoiler alert Ana Maria Menezes is also here Business Journalist for SBC Noticias Brasil. Ana how are you? Hi guys pretty excited to be here pretty excited for the end of the year as well I love Christmas too I should have just taken all these I'm gonna learn that for the next time. For next time, I'm gonna do it. Just wait and see, just wait and see. Yeah, hashtag versus wait and see. We will need a picture of that and we can upload it to the iGamingDaily social media. But yeah, I really like the Christmas trees, the decoration and everything. But I also like OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market and sponsor of iGamingDaily. as the special offer OptiMove are offering new clients a free first month when they buy OptiMove. For more information and claim the free month go to OptiMove.com slash SBC, we will also leave the links down in the episode description so you can find them easily. But we were speaking about things that are still going down this year because we are soon to the launch, the official launch of the new licensing model of OptiMove. of Brazil, which has of course, the process has started a long time ago, but new licenses will be enforced in January 1st, but there's still a lot going on around the sports betting and iGaming industry as the Brasilia Federal Regional Court has ruled against the Attorney General of Brazil in the case that they not restricting the operator's license by lotergy. Ricardo, why don't you take us through the ruling and what it means for the industry? It's an ongoing dispute that's been going on for the last few months. And the Brazilian Federal Regional Court has ruled against the Attorney General's Office, like you said, and maintained the suspension on the ordinances that established the licensee only by the federal government. So the lotterge can still... offer license to the operator so they still can offer the same things that they've been offering for a while. I think this is going to take a little bit longer to get resolved, it's going to be resolved only on the Supreme Court because on the legal basis, Lottej has a really strong case and I think Isadora can talk a little bit more about the things that Lottej is saying about. Gaysa, where do you see the case going in the future and how has the industry reacted of course to the ruling that favored Loteche? The industry is very divided actually. Some people see the situation as okay, Loteche is just following the rules and following the law because they are allowed to do that. The law states that. Some other people say no, the federal law should prevail over the state law and so on. But like Ricardo mentioned, it's going to be a... like this is going to be solved in the long run. I don't think we'll see any resolutions next year. I don't think not even in 2026, to be honest, because Loteche can do what they are doing. This all started, like I said, in previous podcasts before episodes. Loteche can do what they're doing when Michel Temer, our president in 2018, published the law of sports betting in Brazil. The law considered sports betting as a lottery modality. And then in 2020, we had the Supreme Court saying that the federal government cannot actually own the... They're not the only ones who can actually offer lotteries to their public, allowing the state... And then they actually ended the monopoly. Exactly. They ended the monopoly of offering... lotteries in Brazil. So, and the provisional measure actually, when was published, was published after this licensing paper, let's say like that, that Voltaire published. So they published before the provisional measure came saying, whatever was published before it's valid. Whatever comes next after the provisional measure has to follow the rules of the federal government. So actually it hasn't clever. which is who is the president of Botei is not doing anything wrong. They're actually fighting for what was already stated by the federal law with Temer, with the Supreme Court, and then with the provisional measure. Obviously, I don't think the federal government predict what was going to happen. They didn't see this coming. I don't think it was something that let's do that. And we know this could have a we could have a problem with this in the future. But so what? I don't care. I don't think that was the case. But I don't think they realized that all the possible, like they didn't actually analyze all the possible scenarios that we could have after ruling all this stuff. Like I mentioned, the industry is very divided. We talked a lot about that in the past weeks, like within, amongst us professionals of the industry. So it's a very delicate case. hashtag wait and see we've been saying this since last year since I think the first episode that we talked about Brazil we always have to wait and see what's going to happen because it's quite like insane something. Yeah from what I hear is kind of a matter of phrasing and the words they used when they first authorized the industry when they first authorized sports betting saying branding it as the lottery. That was the main problem. Like I'm gonna do a t-shirt reading Temer look what you did or look what you've done. It's your fault. I didn't predict this but it's your fault. Hashtag I blame Temer. Yeah exactly. But speaking of Lotergy which has been of course in the mouth of everyone's mouth and of course in the in the judicial system but also in the Congress because the conflict with La Terce was one of the key discussion points of the CP, the CEPAIDAS bets or the Congressional Commission that addressed the segment of the dress betting of course. But the CEPAIDAS bets, this Congressional Commission is now under scrutiny according to the president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco. Ana, why don't you tell us what happened here? curious thing has been going on in the Senate. So Rodrigo Pacheco, the president of the Senate, so he hinted to senators of the CPEI das Bets that he intends to shorten the committee's work, especially it was scheduled to end in April, actually, but this move comes from, I mean, rumors that business people in the sports betting sector are being targeted by extortion schemes. So it's a pretty big deal. involving alleged intermediaries claiming influence within the commission. So Pacheco actually doesn't have the formal power to dissolve the CPI, but he can still push strategies to weaken it. So he can advise Senators to boycott the sessions, and last week actually the situation escalated when Senator Siru Nogueira he reported to Pacheco that there are suspicions of a Brasilia-based lobbyist. that has been extorting business people, so claiming to act in cahoots, I love this word, despite the fact of what it means, cahoots with CPI members. So according to Nogueira, actually, Silvio just seized this alleged lobbyist. He allegedly demanded 40 million reais, so I don't know what the conversion would be exactly, in dollars, from a businessman to prevent him from being summoned to testify before the committee. So this is actually something pretty huge. We're gonna see how it goes. Actually, Noguera also pointed out that Silvia's names has been linked to the CPI repertoire, Senator Soraya Trotnik. And so he actually has, I mean, he said that Soraya has close ties to this lobbyist. So this is actually a pretty big wait and see. Let's see how it goes. So Soraya denied the accusations. Of course, she... admitted that she knows him, this lobbyist, but she said that they don't have any friendship or anything like it. But yeah, it's a pretty big wait and see just to check how that one turns out. Of course, let's not convert the REI to US dollars because we don't want to jinx the currency exchange rate. Right now it's a bit volatile to speak about how much REI is to USD, but yeah, hopefully. that remains stable for a while. But yeah, I mean, it's certainly a wait and see situation here because it's a very, very deep, deep accusation, a very serious accusation. But yeah, we'll see how it develops and if to see how it develops, remember you have to subscribe to the newsletter of SBC Notícias Brasil because that's where you will get your... insights, your details, your information about everything going on in the country, as well as of course listening to iGamingDaily and subscribing and liking and all that stuff. But some episodes ago, speaking of information, we also talked about the push to ban welfare beneficiaries from using the money coming from those plants in iGaming and sports betting, which now seems unlikely to happen, Ricardo. Yeah, so the Attorney General's Office has appealed a decision from the Supreme Court saying that they don't have the technical ability to prohibit the use of the money that comes from the government in embedding because after the money goes to the people account, it gets mixed with money from other sources because many beneficiaries like 99% of the beneficiaries get money from other sources as well. So they receive from work, they receive from other people, they receive from other ends. So they can't distinguish the money that comes from the government, from the money that comes from other sources. So the attorney general office asked for the Supreme Court to give more guidelines on how they can do it, because they don't know how to do it. They asked more time. and they ask more for guidelines because in the technical standpoint, it's impossible to do. They can't do it. So I think this is something that's going to take a while because the Supreme Court has said it again, that they have to do it, that this is an order and stuff like that. But it's something that in the technical perspective, it's not doable, at least in this point. So we have to wait and see, like we say. Yeah, I think governments really like to try to enforce things, announce things, different measures, but then they realize that the technical aspect is a very, very big deal. And sometimes and even there, I say most times, it's impossible to do what they want to do in the in the in the labs. They want to do it. So it's definitely a tricky situation to for the welfare beneficiaries. But we are just a few days, like we said, from January 1st and the effective launch of new licenses in Brazil. So we, of course, will learn a lot about how the industry develops and how it's going in two months from now on February 25th through the 27th at SBC Summit Rio 2025. So be sure to be there. But last week, we also heard from industry experts during SBC Digital Brazil 2024. Issa, you moderated most panels, actually. during the event. So what were the main takeaways from SBC Digital Brasil? I can say it was like we had free classes to everyone interested in joining the industry or learning more about the industry or knowing the people who are part of the industry. It was a great event. We'd had over 700 registers. We broke the records of SBC. It was insane. the high level of participants as well. Like the online attendees were very active on the group chats. They were sending questions, sharing their thoughts. We heard a lot of compliments ever. Like we have people coming to us saying, it was a great webinar, thank you so much. I couldn't end my year in a better way, like in terms of knowledge and learning more about the industry. So it was a great timing actually. Like a bit, I think, like in the beginning, I think we were a bit concerned about having this in like mid December, because obviously in Latin America and in Brazil, people are living for holidays. It's almost Christmas and New Year's, it's summer here. So it was a bit like concerning for us, but at the same time, we wanted to do that just before the Rio event. Like you mentioned, like the Rio next year is going to be the first event. after the regulated market is enforced. So it was nice to see this. I would say like, I always say that this event was an appetizer for what is coming in Rio. We talked about regulation, we talked about the Luters versus the federal government case. We talked about localizing your products for the Brazilian market. We talked about what's gonna happen with the affiliation market because everything's a bit... blurry, we're not very certain of the rules for affiliation. It was great, it was really good. We have such great panels. Ricardo was also a moderator. Elisa, who is not here, was also a moderator. It was really, really good and good for people to understand more about the industry and about what SPC actually can offer in our events, especially in real. Yeah, yeah, for my part, I think Isadora has covered it really well, It was my first opportunity to moderate one of these panels and it was incredible to have a lot of good insights, a lot of great participation in the chat as well. My panel was about the player preferences and how the regulation can impact in these things because now we have the prohibition of welcome bonuses and I think it is like Isadora said was a free class because it The amount of information that we gathered in this webinars was huge, was really, really huge. And to be able to hear from so many experts that are like molding this industry, these are the people that are going to lead us in this new era of sports betting here in Brazil. So it's really important to know. to hear what they have to say about regulation, about player preference, about KYC, and the key aspects of the regulation. Yeah, and a big shout out also to Scott Fulton, Martin Elliott and Jack Howe, who were behind the organization of the event, but also Anna, you were at Florianopolis for also an event and you were face to face with the industry. Why don't you tell us how it felt, how the people are expecting the new year and the new market? First of all, this was my first solo event. So I was just all by myself, just throwing there, and just had to, you know, do some networking all by myself. So, I mean, I made it happen, which was great. It was a great experience. But to be honest- I mean, you're a great talker. So I don't think you had a hard time networking, to be honest. I mean, you have to come up to people and just say, oh, who are you? I'm this person. So sometimes, I don't know, sometimes, when we're- at our own events, we can just say, oh, so I'm part of this event that you're at. But what happens when it comes to the time where you're not the host? So not being the host was a very frightening and at the same time, fun experience. But I had actually, I learned a lot about how the e-sports industry is playing a pretty big part on the betting industry as well. So sometimes we're just so focused on live sports or just like football. etc. football or soccer or American football as well, gymnastics, whatever. And we can sometimes forget the role of e-sports. So e-sports are a pretty big deal right now. And it was very fun to just understand how the market works because I'm not that familiar, of course, because they have their own environment. It's such a pretty big deal. And it was very nice hearing from people that are experts from this area, especially in terms of revenue. So it's a very big in terms of financial investment as well. It's a pretty big area and people should definitely be on the lookout for it. It's pretty huge. And yeah, I think that it was, it was very fun to hear this new perspective, you know? Yeah, I bet it was. And that will be all for today. We are all very expectant, very anxious about what's going to happen in just a few days, not only because it's Christmas, but I'm talking about. January 1st and the beginning of a new era for Brazil. But for all of you out there, thank you very much. Feliz Natal. Merry Christmas for everyone. Thank you, Isa, Ricardo, Ana. Thank you very much, Aneja McDonald for producing these episodes. And to all of you out there, I'll catch you in the next time. Goodbye.