Brazil’s top football clubs are bracing for a financial crisis as more than R$1.5bn in betting-related sponsorships and advertising revenue disappears.
According to Brazilian consultancy Convocados, which specialises in football management and finance, Série A clubs received around R$1.03bn ($201m) in betting sponsorships during 2025.
Teams in the top-flight league also received 1 billion reais ($192 million) in direct advertising revenue from online betting companies last year, a 67% increase from the previous year.
That figure represents nearly 10% of clubs’ total recurring revenue, and further losses are expected across stadium advertising and broadcast rights fees also financed by betting firms.
Economist Cesar Grafietti, partner at Convocados, described three distinct areas of financial impact facing clubs across the country right now.
“The first and most obvious is on sponsorship. We’re talking about an immediate reduction in contracts that represented more than €170.9m a year in revenue,” Grafietti said.
He added that “most of the clients for these boards were betting companies, and we’re talking about at least another €85.5m in revenue that disappears” on top of direct sponsorship losses.
The most visible casualty so far is Vitória, whose main shirt sponsor 7K Bet ended its contract early, a deal originally scheduled to run until 2027, without paying a penalty.
Santos sits at the opposite end of the spectrum, with its contract worth up to R$85m with Novibet suspended rather than fully terminated, mirroring mechanisms used during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Flamengo’s deal with Betano and Corinthians’ deal with Esportes da Sorte, the latter worth up to R$200m a year and running until 2029, are both expected to follow a similar suspension path.
For Fabio Wolff, managing partner at sports marketing firm Wolff Sports, even suspended contracts offer little comfort, saying “I wouldn’t count on an automatic return to the same values.”
Flamengo president Luiz Eduardo Baptista warned reporters that revenue at the Rio de Janeiro club could fall by 400 million reais, leaving the team unable to honour commitments made for next year.
The club cautioned that cuts could reach youth development, women’s soccer, Olympic sports programmes, as well as suppliers and other workers employed by the organisation.
Betting generated 73% of São Paulo’s marketing revenue in 2025, according to Sports Value, illustrating just how deeply embedded these partnerships had become across the Brazilian game.
Grafietti warned of a chain reaction, saying “you are forced to sell players and prices start to fall, players with contracts up for renewal may stay on lower salaries, and signings tend not to happen at the values we have been seeing.”
The structural problem facing clubs is that future revenues were already committed before the provisional measure came into effect, meaning obligations remain even as the income has vanished.
Online betting firms have filed a legal challenge against the ban at Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, arguing no genuine urgency justified the government using a provisional measure that takes immediate effect.
Flamengo and Fluminense have additionally warned that illegal operators could retain bettors while regulated sponsorship disappears from the legitimate market entirely.
Grafietti offered some longer-term optimism, suggesting clubs will recover financially in the medium term, though experts remain divided over how badly investor confidence in Brazil has been damaged.
