Brazil launches national policy to combat match-fixing in sports betting

Brazil has formally launched a new national policy aimed at preventing and combating the manipulation of sports results, creating a coordinated federal framework to protect the integrity of competitions as the country’s regulated betting market continues to evolve.

The Brazilian government announced on April 2 that it had instituted the National Policy for the Prevention and Combating of Sports Results Manipulation (PNPEMR) through Interministerial Ordinance No. 1, signed on March 25 and published in the Official Gazette on April 2. The initiative brings together the Ministries of Sport, Finance, and Justice and Public Security, with the Ministry of Sport coordinating the policy.

According to the government, the policy’s main goal is to strengthen the regulation, prevention, monitoring, inspection, and repression of sports-result manipulation in Brazil. The text also states that sporting outcomes must be determined exclusively by the legitimate performance of athletes and recognizes sports integrity as a matter of public interest tied to credibility, transparency, and public trust in competitions.

Implementation will be carried out through an Action Plan structured around four main pillars: regulation, prevention, monitoring and inspection, and repression. The policy provides for awareness campaigns and training aimed at athletes, coaches, referees, managers, and other sports professionals, while also calling for stronger information-sharing, better use of data, and more coordinated criminal investigations into fraud schemes, including those linked to transnational networks.

The ordinance also gives weight to longer-term integrity measures. Among the priority themes listed by the government are the strengthening of integrity structures within sports bodies and betting operators, the creation of effective reporting mechanisms with whistleblower identity protection, cooperation with educational institutions to include integrity topics in sports training, and guidance on inserting integrity clauses into sports-related public contracts and tenders.

The launch is the culmination of a process that began in September 2025, when the same three ministries created a working group to draft a national response to match manipulation. That earlier group was tasked with building integrated flows for receiving and handling reports, avoiding institutional overlap, and adapting international best practices to Brazil’s local reality.

For Brazil’s betting and sports sectors, the policy marks an important step from isolated enforcement toward a more permanent integrity architecture. As the country expands oversight of licensed sports betting, the federal government is clearly trying to show that market regulation must be matched by a stronger anti-fraud framework if public confidence in both betting and sport is to hold. This final assessment is an inference based on the policy’s scope, interministerial structure, and implementation design.