October 12 – Flamengo and Fluminense put aside one of Brazilian football’s fiercest rivalries on Sunday, turning the Maracanã derby into an unexpected alliance against the country’s new betting ban.
Both sides replaced their former main sponsors with the same message: ‘Proibir não é proteger’, or ‘Prohibition is not protection’ – on the front of their shirts.
Betano and Superbet, until recently the main shirt sponsors of Flamengo and Fluminense respectively, were behind the coordinated action with the two clubs, according to Brazilian reports.
Flamengo had already brought the slogan against Santos three days earlier.
The protest also spread to the stands. Flamengo supporters held up banners criticizing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Congress and the Federal Supreme Court for the ban, bringing a firm trade dispute into Brazil’s political arena.
Lula’s government banned fixed-odds sports betting and online casino games through Provisional Measure 1,394 on September 25. Operators stopped accepting new deposits immediately, advertising was removed on October 5, and betting websites and apps were to be taken offline from October 6. The measure still requires congressional approval to remain in effect.
The government said the move was a response to gambling addiction, family debt and other social harms, although the gambling industry argues that removing licensed operators will drive customers to offshore venues.
Fourteen of the 20 Serie A clubs had bookmakers in key shirt positions before the measure was introduced. Division-wide betting sponsorship was reportedly worth an estimated R$1.03 billion ($206.35 million) by 2025, although it accounted for 7.2% of the club’s total revenue rather than the existential share sometimes implied by the industry.
Some individual contracts are much more difficult to replace. Flamengo’s deal with Betano was valued at R$268.5 million ($53.79 million) annually, the richest betting sponsorship in Brazilian club soccer. Atlético Mineiro, for its part, has already terminated a three-year H2Bet contract worth R$ 180 million guaranteed.
Fluminense president Mattheus Montenegro said the club’s Superbet contract is currently suspended and complained the move had come without enough warning, leaving clubs little time to adjust their business plans.
Since then, Fluminense has used Superscore, a statistics application belonging to the same commercial group, in the vacant jersey space.
Brazilian soccer spent the last few years allowing betting money to take up almost every available piece of inventory. Three weeks after the ban, they are beginning to discover just how difficult it is to erase this reliance on the shirt just as quickly, even rallying arch-rivals in a show of opposition and desperation.
Contact the writer of this story, Harry Ewing, at (email protected)
