Betting sponsorships in Brazil have become an arms race in recent years, with operator branding almost omnipresent in football. But with the Brazilian top-flight league getting under way this week, six teams out of 20 don’t currently have a sponsor on their kits. Now in its second year of legal betting, has Brazil’s gambling sponsorship bubble burst?
Brazil’s journey to legal betting led to a proliferation of betting sites, with some stakeholders claiming it had the most access to online betting of any market globally. Sponsorship became a key battleground, especially in Brazil’s historic football sector. Last season 19 of the top-flight clubs in Brazil had a betting platform as a primary sponsor. The remaining team RB Bragantino is fronted by owner Red Bull.
Fellipe Fraga, CBO of regulated local operator EstrelaBet, points to the previous five years of grey market betting as pivotal to this sweeping dominance of betting sponsorship in football. “What happened in the past years was a lot of companies competing for the same space,” Fraga tells iGB. “Due to lack of regulation many companies had the money to start a business and spend on sponsorships to create brand awareness.”
Sponsorship values rocket
With so much competition, the price of sponsorship deals in Brazil rocketed. VaideBet announced a BRL370 million ($71.2 million) sponsorship of Corinthians in January 2024, which, at the time, was the biggest sponsorship in Brazilian football history. In May of that year, Flamengo and Pixbet broke that record with a deal that was set to boost the club’s coffers by up to BRL470 million ($90.4 million). It was a renegotiation of an agreement made earlier that year.
Kaizen Gaming-owned Betano also entrenched itself in Brazilian sports, taking over the sponsorship of Serie A, the top-flight league, after making the same move in Argentina. Notably, Betano also sponsored the Copa America, South America’s largest international tournament.
Brazil’s top-flight clubs received an estimated BRL1 billion from betting sponsorships in 2025 as operators were willing to pay hefty prices, explains Andre Santa Ritta, partner at Pinheiro Neto Advogados. “Brands wanted the public to know them to enter the market,” Santa Ritta says. “And that was the only reason for them to pay that huge amount of money to the sports clubs and the soccer clubs, mostly.”
Cracks start to show
But as 2024 progressed, and Brazil edged closer to regulated betting, the first crack appeared when the deal between Corinthians and VaideBet came to an abrupt end in June that year. The sponsorship, which had been set to last three years, was terminated after reports of corruption relating to the deal’s negotiations. When regulation came into force on 1 January 2025, only licensed operators were able to sponsor in Brazil. With only 14 operators on full licences at the time, this caused concerns among some.
But the judicial system was sympathetic to this, and operator Esportes da Sorte received special authorisation to operate nationwide before later receiving a full licence. It had forged deals with both the Corinthians and Grêmio football clubs, and the court ruled that it needed a preliminary licence to honour those sponsorships.
The biggest indicator yet of sponsorships being on the decline arrived in August 2025, when Pixbet’s record sponsorship of Flamengo was terminated early, amid rumours of financial issues at the operator. Many speculated the operator had paid too much for the deal, overextending in its attempts to gain share of the regulated market.
It was also reported Alfa Entertainment had missed payments of its football sponsorships, further raising the suspicion of operators agreeing deals beyond their means.
Why the falloff?
Pixbet’s renegotiation of its Flamengo sponsorship was a key turning point, with the value of the sponsorship roughly tripling in size before it fell apart. In doing so, this also hiked the expectations of football clubs in regards to what they could set the price at for betting companies.
Fraga notes Brazil’s second division clubs struggled to get betting sponsorships in 2025, with many only managing to do so in the second half of the year. That trend has continued into 2026, with six clubs beginning the season with no betting sponsor. “The challenge was they now had to look for different kind of industries to sponsor the club, at a much lower value,” Fraga says.
Udo Seckelmann, head of gambling & crypto at Brazilian law firm Bichara e Motta Advogados, tells iGB he expected the popularity of sponsorships to decline. This trend could prove troublesome for a number of clubs that are reliant on betting sponsorships.
“This was expected since day one,” Seckelmann explains. “I think that Brazilian clubs are surprised with this a little bit, because they are still asking for big sponsorships. But apart from the top five operators in Brazil, the others will start to reduce the value of sponsorships for clubs. It’s just something that’s going to happen.”
Brazilian clubs much better off from betting sponsorships
Seckelmann describes operators’ race to acquire market share as a “gold rush”, although he feels it has been beneficial for Brazilian sports on the whole. “If you analyse Brazil before the regulation of sports betting, and compare it to now, Brazilian clubs are much better off now than they were before, in terms of Latin America especially,” Seckelmann says.
“You’ll see that Brazilian clubs are much richer and have better teams in comparison to Argentinian clubs, which historically had better teams than Brazilian or equal. The regulation of sports betting can be something that was a big landmark in terms of Brazilian clubs and betting operators starting to invest.”
Companies weighing up investment
Another aspect to consider is where sponsorship fits into operators’ financial planning, especially with taxes on the rise. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently approved a gradual tax rise to 15% of GGR from 2028 onwards. Alongside other taxes, the effective rate is nearing 50% for licensed operators. Further bad news could be on the horizon, too, with politicians weighing up whether to implement an additional 15% tax on deposits. Marketing is often one of the first areas to be cut when taking new tax rises into account.
Brazilian iGaming analyst Elvis Lourenco says operators are now taking a closer look at their marketing approaches to consider whether the eye-watering sponsorships of previous years are valuable anymore. “There are 80 operators and almost 200 brands, so I think everyone wants a piece of the pie,” he notes. “But now, things are changing. Taxes are increasing, and now every operator is doing the math. This kind of sponsorship, it was inflated a little bit, because every soccer club increased their prices.”
Santa Ritta concurs, adding: “I think the market is coming to a reality in which I don’t think it’s sustainable for you to keep that level of sponsorship coming in from betting operators for so long because the price was really high.”
Are sponsorships in Brazil a good return on investment?
Fraga poses another interesting question — is the attraction of the Brazilian football league sufficient to warrant the levels of sponsorship spend witnessed in recent times? He suggests it lacks the global exposure of other divisions such as the English Premier League, which boasts viewership figures way ahead of the Brazilian Serie A.
“For the UK it makes sense, because it’s watched across the world,” Fraga says. “It’s a dream, because everyone is watching, you find the shirts around the globe. It’s a proven strategy, and it works for clubs that have a global appeal. But for Brazilian football, it is not the same. For a brand to apply a sponsorship to a European club, it is a global strategy. In Brazil, it is a local strategy.”
With Fraga insisting the football sponsorship market is “shrinking”, he suggests operators will turn their focus to other sports which are rapidly growing in popularity in Brazil. He believes there are still intriguing opportunities out there. “Now the challenge is how companies will apply the money for marketing in different situations, in different markets and different groups. There are fans of motor racing, fans of UFC, fans of American football. They’re big in Brazil now. It’s a changing moment, and the future is a good place to be,” he says.
Could the rich get richer?
Betano is the current market leader, with many attributing this to its extensive expenditure on sponsorship both before and after market regulation in Brazil. After Pixbet’s agreement with Flamengo was terminated, Betano took over in a deal reported to be worth BRL250 million a year.
H2 Gambling Capital Managing Director Ed Birkin previously told iGB Betano could cover the annual cost of the Flamengo sponsorship with 13 days of operational revenue. In contrast, Pixbet’s annual deal equated to 72 days of operational revenue in Brazil. The consensus is that while Tier 2 and Tier 3 operators will pull back on sponsorship for fear of overextension, Tier 1 companies will look to compound their advantage and continue with significant outlays on sports marketing.
“I believe there’s a big difference in Brazil between the big operators and medium or small operators,” Seckelmann says. “Brazil is very marketing-oriented, in the sense that for you to get a relevant market share in Brazil, you have to be able to create awareness. So sometimes they’re going to pay more than they are capable of because of this, especially medium and small operators.”
Fraga, Santa Ritta and Lourenco all agree smaller operators will have to row back on sponsorship. “The average operator in Brazil is struggling to survive today,” Santa Ritta adds. “They are suffering, so these guys are not very willing to pay a lot of money to be shown in soccer matches.”
Lourenco adds: “I think that the top tiers will continue to invest on this.”
Has Brazil’s betting sponsorship bubble burst?
What’s clear is that many in the industry expected the eye-catching sponsorship valuations to decrease, especially in the face of an increasingly tough regulatory environment for operators. The gold rush that Seckelmann references followed years of regulatory uncertainty and grey market betting access, forcing operators into aggressive and sometimes unsustainable deals as they looked to compete for brand awareness.
It would be inaccurate to say betting sponsorship is grinding to a full halt, as the vast majority of Serie A clubs will kick off this season with a betting sponsor front and centre on their kits. But the dynamic is certainly changing into one that demands a more careful, measured and creative approach from medium-sized and smaller operators as they reassess how to disrupt the widening disparity between themselves and the giants leading the market.