Brazil’s regulated gambling market will benefit more from having strong operators rather than a firm regulator, according to senior figures from BetMGM Brazil.
The Brazilian market was regulated on 1 January 2025 but has already seen significant legislative changes at the hands of the Brazilian government, including a new 15% tax on player deposits for operators and an increase of gambling tax from 12%-15%, although a proposed hike to 18% was scrapped.
BetMGM Brazil entered into the market once it regulated via MGM Resorts’ joint venture with Grupo Global.
Speaking on a panel at ICE in Barcelona on Tuesday (January 21), BetMGM Brazil’s principal product manager Andre ‘Sapuca’ Nogueira insisted operators should be the ones driving standards in the market.
“People think that for a market to be strongly regulated, it needs a strong regulator,” he said. “That is counter intuitive because we need strong operators. If you have strongly regulated operators, they are going to drive the standards in the market.
“We are all in with that strategy of being so keen on responsible gaming, and we believe that the top competitors are also on that path with us. Strong operators will help with the adoption of the legal market, and therefore the market becomes more legal than illegal.”
Sapuca did admit that over-reaches from regulators can eventually be beneficial for a new market such as Brazil.
“Of course, we have a partnership with a regulator that is open to receiving new ideas from us,” he told delegates. “Sometimes they go beyond what they should do and introduce new rules that might need adjusting later.
“This happened three or four times last year and it was a good experience. In the end, everyone learns and the operators become stronger. The operators have a key role in making the market responsible.”
Elsewhere on the panel, BetMGM chief marketing officer Ana Paula Castell Branco said that newly regulated markets have a responsibility to educate consumers about unlicensed operators in particular.
She said: “I think it’s very important that we educate consumers because in Brazil it was a mess.
“Consumers nowadays don’t know what are the regulated brands and what are the non-regulated brands. We need to explain to them that we are responsible and we are regulated, and explain what difference this makes in the customer’s life.
“We’re really responsible in terms of trying to predict bad behaviours, and we have an ongoing responsible gaming platform that always tries to communicate to consumers.”
MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle has previously stated his belief that BetMGM Brazil is capable of securing as much as 10% of market share in the South American country.
The post BetMGM Brazil: Operators, not regulators, will drive market growth first appeared on EGR Intel.
Product head Andre ‘Sapuca’ Nogueira says the idea of needing heavy-handed lawmakers is “counter intuitive”, while marketing chief Ana Paula Castello Branco emphasises the need to educate consumers
The post BetMGM Brazil: Operators, not regulators, will drive market growth first appeared on EGR Intel.